ruthie writes

New Home!

2012-01-29T13:20:00.000-08:00

Come fly with me to new places on the Inter-Web!

Hi friends,

I'm now writing at
ruthinfood.com.

Thanks for reading!

Quick Pic: Salmonete

2012-01-19T16:27:00.000-08:00

It's the second week of the BasqueStage, and I'm trying to keep my head above water at Martin Berasategui. I'm currently working on the partida de pescado, the fish station.

Most of my responsibilities thus far have been prep work- cleaning squid, breaking down chickens for family meal, and folding squid ink raviolis (think of wrapping a cold, slippery Christmas present for a Lilliputian).

However, today I caught a glimpse of the Salmonete dish: roasted red mullet, crispy scales, white chocolate, and wakame. Colors, contrasting tastes, what a gorgeous plate. Long hours and prep work aside, this is why I'm here.

Quick Pic: Pintxos to share

2012-01-17T02:00:00.000-08:00

Pintxos (PEEN-chos) are Basque bar bites, small portions of food to grab with txakoli (a white, slightly bubbly wine made here in the Pais Vasco) or a beer for a casual meal. Much like tapas in the rest of the Iberian peninsula, pintxos are the Basque equivalent of fish and chips, wings or nachos, just with top quality ingredients. Meant to be a leisurely meal while standing with friends, pintxos are as much about the culture of eating as the dishes themselves.

Clockwise, from top left: carpaccio with arugula, pinenuts and Parmesan cheese; bocadillos de Jamon Serrano on perfectly crunchy baguettes; left, pulpo a la plantxa- grilled octopus- and right, txipirones (CHEE-pee-rone-es) - mini fried squid; and pintxo de champis- bread, bacon and mushroom towers, a savory skewer that prompts you to- ahem- order another round.

Martin Berasategui: First Impressions

2012-01-15T11:40:00.000-08:00

I’ve just finished a Sunday lunch shift at MB, preceeded bylunch and dinner shifts on Saturday. Since the restaurant is closed on Mondaysand Tuesdays, I find myself with some time to reflect on my new job and my rolehere.

The first thing I noticed about this kitchen: the sheernumber of people working here. Numbers-wise, we would be very close to afootball team: offense and defense, special teams, kickers, coaches,coordinators and trainers. Onceeveryone is in motion, it can be difficult to find your way through the tangleof people. However, the good thing is: there is always someone to ask if youneed a hand with a task, or if you don’t know where something is.

I chose to start on the fish station; previous BasqueStage Marco Bahena had told me the Chef de Partida there was the most demanding. Ifigured if I could make it on the fish station, I would be able to make it onthe other stations as well. This logic of starting with the toughest boss mayor may not work out. I have seen more than a few serious tongue-lashings foroffenses ranging from talking too much to improperly chopped parsley.

Yesica concentrates on the raviolis.

For the past two days, I have worked with Igor (from Bilbao)and Yesica (from Argentina), on the Squid Ink Raviolis. To assemble this pouchof shaved squid filled with tinta de calamar,you need steady hands, aminiature offset spatula, and the patience of an origami professional.Intricate and frustrating, while also imaginative and beautiful, these ravioliprobably will remain my task for the next week; after seven straight hours offolding these packets, I’m starting to get the hang of it.

En total, it’s awhole new world here. Elisha and I are used to skeleton crews in shoeboxkitchens in labor-cost-conscious New York City. I think next week we’ll reallyget a feel for the ebb and flow of service here. While it’s taxing and at timesintimidating, it’s exciting to be in a completely new environment.

Now I’m going to eat pintxosand drink txakoli- tomorrow is my dayoff!

Quick Pic: Here we go!

2012-01-13T15:09:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow will be my first day at Restaurante Martin Berasategui. After stopping by the kitchen to talk to the chef de cuisine and a few chefs de partie, I snapped this shot of the copper nameplate that greets guests as they walk up the stairs to the dining room. Let the games begin...

Quick Pic: The hills are alive...

2012-01-11T03:12:00.000-08:00

...with sheep! I went for a run yesterday, and I had to snap some quick shots of these sheep on the green hills of Gipuzkoa.

First couple days in Pais Vasco

2012-01-10T16:44:00.000-08:00

On Monte Urgull looking west, above Isla Santa Clara

I've been in the Pais Vasco for two days now, and I'm lucky enough to have this week off to get settled in my new surroundings.

I'm easing back into my Spanish (rusty and sprinkled with Italian). I'm wholeheartedly embracing the laid back approach to life at the moment, because I know once the kitchen gets going, it will be go-go-go until I can figure out how to tread water.

Below is my housemate and fellow BasqueStage recipient Elisha Ben-Haim. He cooked us dinner the last two nights, and he continues to surprise me with his fantastic photo poses.

"Belle Epoque? Or Art Deco?"

Fortunate to have a couple clear, sunny days, Elisha and I have made the most of our luck with two gorgeous strolls through the city. Here are some more shots from Bilbao and San Sebastian:

Pastries in Bilbao. The chocolate drizzled meringue really hit the spot.

The Guggenheim in Bilbao.

Weathered storm doors at the ship yard in the Bahia de La Concha.

A house tiled with vibrant colors, reminiscent of fish scales shimmering just below the water's surface

The Basque fish monger is proud of his monkfish liver...

...and Basque children aren't afraid to touch it.

The promenade at the La Concha

Beautifully restored carousel from 1900, also at La Concha

A view through the trees of Monte Urgull back towards Gros, the beach with the surf break

Small kids, Big church.

Churros with rich hot chocolate: the perfect snack to warm up on a cold January evening.

I'm quickly falling in love with the Basque Country, for obvious reasons!

But there is work involved, and I'm also looking forward to that too. Next on the agenda:

A much-anticipated visit to the Sammic factory to get to know the sponsors of this awesome scholarship and learn more about their products. I previously hadn't heard of Sammic, but I'm now learning they make nearly every large piece of equipment needed in a professional kitchen, from blenders, mixers and meat grinders to immersion circulators and vacuum sealers.

In this video, Marco Bahena (my partner from last year's Pellegrino Almost Famous cooking competition) demonstrates how a Sammic Vegetable Prep Machine can make a cook's life a whole lot easier.

It's probably too late to say All I want for Christmas...

This upcoming visit to the factory should be enlightening because we will meet the engineers who design tools to help us cook at a higher level. Photos to follow!

Also, we are planning a visit to Biarritz in France to see more of the Basque region. I have a feeling this visit will be especially taxing; there probably won't be any pastries or lovely scenery involved.

Thanks for reading. Agur from Lasarte...

A quick look homeward as I start my next adventure

2012-01-08T14:08:00.000-08:00

I’ve just arrived in Lasarte-Oria, Guipuzkoa, a small townoutside San Sebastian in the Basque Country. I traveled for twenty-six hours throughDallas, Frankfurt, and Bilbao. Now I'm so tired, I can't sleep.

Yes, I’m tired, but mostly I’m excited. I’m thrilled for my new job, which I’ll start on Wednesday. I’m itching to go for a run through my newtown. I’m dying to go grocery shopping and fill my refrigerator withvegetables, cheeses and txakoli wine.

I’m anxious too, because this level of cooking- threeMichelin stars, in Europe, at a gorgeous, respected restaurant- is the highestlevel I’ve experienced in my career thus far. So how does this young cook deal withnerves? I’m telling myself that I can do it, and I’m thinking about all mywonderful experiences and supportive friends and family who have helped me gethere.

So before I start this next adventure in earnest, I'll share some of the beautiful food moments from the past couple weeks. I’m so fortunate that myfamily embraces and celebrates food. I am fortunate to have friends who value food, and tocome from a region that produces some of the best food in the world.

Here’s a quick snapshot of my holiday meals.

My Ninong Tom carves the lechon for Noche Buena. Roast pig...mmmmm

My father and my uncle, making our traditional Swedish pancake breakfast on Christmas morning

The gorgeous fruits of their labor with the mandatory Lingonberry sauce

Christmas dinner is my grandfather's recipe: garlic-studded, bacon-wrapped rib roast.

Mise en place often involves champagne right up in there with the brussel sprouts.

The Selby men attend to the festive colors of the dining table

Carving the roast, which was a little overdone this year. Chickie wouldn't have been pleased!

With Mama and my friend Caroline at my send-off dinner last week


Just before opening the buffet with Pantesca salad, kale Caesar, risotto, veal breast and lasagne.

That's the last collection of photos from home. For the next six months, it’s going to be all new surroundings, all new faces, and all newchallenges.

Stay tuned! Good night...

Olive Oil Shortbread Cookies

2011-12-12T12:24:00.000-08:00

The New York Times Dining Section ran two great pieces lastweek: one, a list of the Best Cookbooks of the Year, and another about the mostnoticeable trend, the “At Home” style of cookbook. Julia Moskin’s piece, “What Happens When Chefs Come Home,” underscores a crucial shift in cookbook consumers: peoplewant recipes of stuff they can actually cook. Glossy studio shots of theunattainable sphere are out; hamburgers and Caesar salad are in.

In her “When Chefs Come Home” piece, Moskin mentions arecipe for Shortbread Biscuits that wisely substitutes olive oil for butter.Still high on my October visit to Tuscany for olive oil crush at Villa Campestri,I thought I have to try this. I founda recipe for olive oil shortbread and then considered my oil choice.

Though vegetal and grassy, the bright green Villa Campestrioil could add an interesting twist to the butter bomb that traditional shortbreadcan be. Or I could end up with a bitter, greenish biscuit.

Only oneway to find out...

The verdict? Moskin is right: olive oil greatly improvesthis classic cookie. I could easily see the Villa Campestri restaurant servingthem with afternoon tea on the terrace.

Olive oil adds a luxurious yet subtle flavor boost.

Admittedly, these cookies aren’t quite as crumbly as traditional shortbread, but they trade texturefor a rich, more nuanced flavor. There’s simply more going on than the averageshortbread cookie. I don’t get palate fatigue from butter overload, which is afancy way of saying “I eat them five at a time.”

These cookies are also comparatively more healthful since we've lost the saturated fat of butter.

I’m excited to have found yet anotherrecipe that is improved with the addition of quality olive oil. Maybe thesecookies will be left by the Christmas tree this year...

Riding Around Manhattan

2011-12-02T16:30:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I rode my bicycle around all of Manhattan. The thirty-two mile loop took me six hours with a few breaks.

My cruiser bike, Bess.

We are cut from the same cloth, Bess and I: both laid-back California girls out of place in a big, fast city. While bike messengers and Brooklyn hipsters dart in and out of traffic, Bess and I cruise only the streets with well-marked bike lanes. We are outsiders here, little girls looking in, thus it makes sense for us to circumnavigate Manhattan, rather than criss-cross it.

In the six years that I’ve been in and out of this city, yesterday’s ride was one of the most enjoyable things I’ve ever done. Here’s how it went.

I left NoHo around 8:45am. I headed southwest and popped out to the West Side Highway via West Houston St. I then started up the Hudson River, shivering and slapping my gloved hands trying to stay warm. Of course I picked the coldest day of the year so far! Yet, the sun was shining, and the crisp air kept me pedaling.

One of the first people I saw on the West Side Highway was... my brother Ben!

Hustling down to work in TriBeCa, Ben stopped and turned around, and we had to laugh at our happy coincidence.

Two Selby kids, riding bikes in New York, and both with cut-finger gloves too! He wished me a safe ride, and pushed south.

I turned north and kept riding, only to stop again at the sight of the USS Intrepid.

Soon, I was past the strollers and the mothers of the Upper West Side, and I approached the top of the island.

At the George Washington Bridge

I learned that my beach cruiser is quite heavy, but that fact works in my favor in the hills of Harlem. I learned that riding along the Hudson is much colder than riding the East River. I learned that the New York City Parks and Recreation Department has done a pretty thorough job with the signage for the Greenway path around the whole city. I got lost once- on East 158^th St.- and only because I didn’t follow the path far enough.

Happy to reach the half-way point

As you might expect on these riverside pathways, I saw lots and lots of dogs. I saw plenty of people running, and many people just aimlessly strolling. I heard conversations between old friends about wives and grandchildren; I eavesdropped on a few animated phone arguments. I saw people of all shapes and sizes training at the East River track, including a boxer who couldn’t have been more than 5 feet tall, his fists pumping so fast they blurred his face.

I saw the undergirding of thirteen bridges and one cable car, the completely out-of-place Roosevelt Island Tramway.

Looking south under the Manhattan Bridge.

I saw countless delivery guys with plastic bag lunches swinging from their handle bars. I noticed many of the Chinese delivery guys have semi-motorized bicycles that propel them even when they’re not pedaling; I’m not even sure how the mechanics work. The Mexican guys just flat out hustle, some with helmets, some without.

Most delightful was the view of many elementary school playgrounds from the bike path: I saw hundreds of New York City school children running around, playing kickball, jumping and screaming in the early winter morning. Recess- what a wonderful reminder of the child in us all.

A gorgeous burst of color against the granite of the Harlem River Parkway

Bess looking mighty small in comparison to some Harlem River highrises

Even a day later, I still remember vividly the smells on my ride. I suppose in a car you’re either going too fast to notice, or the cabby’s got his own special aroma. In contrast, on a bicycle, I was going slow enough to really notice the changes in smell. Most were quite pleasant; in the morning part of my ride, I caught many warm bread smells from bakeries. Another frequent scent was fresh laundry; I could actually tell the difference between Mountain Breeze and Fresh Linen!

More than once, I smelled the oregano-sweet of marijuana. Only once did I smell sewage- at the Riverbank State Park treatment plant at West 135^th St.

Several times I got the unmistakable and familiar smell of deep fryer oil. Doughnuts? Chicken? Empanadas?

The bike path is blocked on the East River from East 70^th St to East 38^th, so I had to cut into the madness of traffic. I took 2^nd Avenue down, hiding in the relative safety of its bike lane. I was pleasantly surprised by the smell of fresh cut pine and fir from Christmas tree vendors lining the sidewalk. Despite the honking, the delivery truck exhaust and the swerving taxi cabs, I had to smile when I smelled Christmas.

I made it down to the Lower East Side, and I was saddened to see the shuttered Fulton Fish Market. I’m currently reading a book called Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food by Paul Greenberg, and the outlook for many fisheries is not good. I suppose the New York harbor and its immediate surroundings haven’t been great fishing waters for at least two generations, but it was sad to see such a tangible reminder that fish are no longer caught here.

Fulton Fish Market, now just a parking lot

I also tested out the best 99 cents I've spent recently- the 360 app from Occipital. It will stitch together images in sequence to give you panoramic shots with the iPhone. AMAZING.

Bess hanging out under the Brooklyn Bridge

I made it down to Wall Street, around Clinton Castle and caught the Statue of Liberty in the auburn afternoon sun.

An enhanced 360 view of New York Harbor

Still quite cold and by now genuinely hungry (despite my cheese sandwich and hard-boiled egg snack), I stopped in Battery Park City for some fries and a milkshake at the new downtown location of Shake Shack. Unlike the Madison Square Park location, there were NO LINES.

Sated with a little salt and a little something sweet, I returned to the bike path and headed once again up the Hudson. It had taken me a little over six hours, with water breaks, three potty stops, tons of photo ops, some detours and some walking to avoid dense traffic, but I had done it: I rode my bicycle around Manhattan.

Just before turning off the West Side Highway and heading home

No awards were given, no personal best time record was set. And I wouldn’t even say that the experience changed me. Rather, it was an enjoyable day that reminded me to keep my eyes open wide to the wonder that is this city.

Chestnut Pasta Party for One

2011-11-15T19:31:00.000-08:00

It's a rainy night here in New York City. I hurried home and realized I had nothing for dinner. ...Or did I?

Hiding in the freezer was some chestnut pasta dough. Several weeks ago, I made chestnut flour pappardelle for dinner, but the batch was too big for that evening. In Italy, I learned that fresh pasta dough can be frozen with no ill effects, so we froze it.

Fast forward to tonight:

Cutting fettuccini

Tiny noodle nests

Going for a quick dip...

Fresh pasta only needs 2 minutes to cook.

Totally makes up for the hands-on time.

The sparse toppings I was able to rustle up:

Olive oil pressed this October at Villa Campestri

Crumbled blue cheese

Some chopped celery leaves for color.

Did I mention the fridge was nearly empty?

But it all turned out pretty damn delicious.

Easy Pasta Ratio Rules:
For every one egg, use 100g of flour.
Also, one egg = one portion.
So if you have 10 people coming over for dinner, use 10 eggs and 1kg of flour.
If you want to use chestnut flour like I did for tonight's fettuccini, use 50/50 chestnut flour and Tipo 0 pasta flour.

Thanks to the boys in the Villa Campestri Restaurant in Vicchio di Mugello for all the pasta knowledge. Grazie infinite Jerry e Samuele!

AmorOlio at Villa Campestri

2011-10-19T02:56:00.000-07:00

I'm in Vicchio di Mugello, a tiny Tuscan town about 30 minutes northeast of Florence. The hills are perfect for long walks, the pasta is delicious, and the olive oil is like nothing I've ever tasted. A cold and windy winter is just around the corner, so luckily there are no American film crews and no huge tour buses clogging the roads.

Thanks to the very generous Paolo Pasquali and Nancy Harmon Jenkins, I'm tagging along as an assistant for AmorOlio, a week-long immersion in olive oil culture and Tuscan cuisine. This visit has proved quite timely, as olive oil makes headlines in both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.

In the past three days, we have inspected olive groves and visited traditional mills where olive oil is pressed. Through lively tasting sessions, we have discussed the taste of great oil, the different ways it can be spoiled (heat, exposure to oxygen, and light), and how to educate consumers without condescension. Of course, we have cooked every day to test food pairings with dramatically different oil styles. It's been a great post-graduation trip to decompress from culinary school while still staying inspired by food.

Here are a couple photographs from our time so far at Villa Campestri.

Green olives one week before harvest

The set-up for olive oil tasting

A meat counter in the San Lorenzo Mercato Centrale in Florence.

The market is a great place to learn food vocabulary, like hen (gallina), turkey (tacchino), or rabbit (coniglio.)

It's also reassuring to see that "Hot Dogs" are the same in Italian.

The gorgeous colors of the produce section

Back at Villa Campestri's kitchen, Samuele puts the finishing touches on dessert:

olive oil cake with ricotta and wild berry coulis.

Chef Jerry holds a beautiful example of a porcini mushroom.

In Florence, chocolate truffles come in a too-cute cupola box.

Porcini Mushroom Risotto with a glass of Vernaccia in hand

Villa Campestri Olive Oil Resort, my home for the week.

(I'm still pinching myself!)

I've learned a lot about high quality olive oil; it can be sweet, grassy, peppery or lemony. It can be structured and complex, like wine. It can also spoil rancid or get moldy if it was poorly pressed or improperly stored. Bright green at first, olive oil will lose its color- and its healthy polyphenol properties- as it gets older or if exposed to high heat during storage. If you have a bottle of nice olive oil, use it! Olive oil is best fresh. The longer it lives in the cabinet or by the stove, the less flavor it will bring to your plate.

I'm hoping to bring home a couple cans of high quality oil from Villa Campestri, named Olio di Cosimo for Pasquali's grandson. It's peppery, bright green, reminiscent of artichoke and a freshly-cut lawn. Once I get back to New York (Mon Oct 24th), I'm planning to make salad, some butternut squash soup, maybe even a pizza to find the best pairing with this delicious oil. Give me a buzz if you want to join!

With love, from Vicchio

Coming Full Circle: My Experience Raising Chickens

2011-10-10T15:48:00.000-07:00

During the summer of 2010, I accidentally killed a chicken in my care at the CIA Student Garden. I carelessly left the roof of the chicken coop propped open with a pole, and when the wind started to blow, the roof came crashing down. I felt terrible, despondent even. Yet, it taught me that accidents happen, that farms are indeed places where animals meet their end. It's how the animals live and die while on that farm that really matters.

In any supermarket meat department, we find a wide variety of descriptors for the kind of life an animal has enjoyed: grass fed, free range, cage free, hormone free, pasture raised, even happy. While these terms can be confusing and often fodder for jokes about hipsters at Whole Foods in Portland, they represent an important step in the improvement of animal welfare on farms. Sure, these products are more expensive. But it's just like New York City real estate: if you want space, it costs money. It costs money to own the land to pasture, it costs money to tend it. That price pays people to help raise the animals, and to slaughter in a humane way.

I'm not starting a food revolution here. I'm mostly rehashing Michael Pollan points and figures from the film Food Inc. But thinking about this issue- how animals are raised for food- led me to the Deer Park garden to tend to the chickens in the first place, and eventually led to our construction of a new chicken coop and to a larger flock of heritage breed Buckeye hens.

Below I've compiled a collection of photos spanning nearly two years in Saint Helena- from the first time I collected eggs, to the slaughter and eventual consumption of our hens. Warning- there are some photos that could be unsettling if you're not used to seeing how animals go from farm to supermarket packaging. It may make you a little squeamish, but ultimately I hope to acknowledge the fact that an animal has died for my nourishment, and thus honor that animal. If I'm going to eat meat, I don't want to sweep that under the rug.

March 2010: My first time collecting eggs

Douglas Hayes' hoop coop model we followed

The roosting racks across the rear of the hoop coop

The frame built by Chef Patrick Clark and Slow Food Napa Valley Chapter

Our frame in early spring 2011.

(Look how bare the vines are in the background.)

The hoop coop starts to take shape with cattle panel looped over the door frame

Jack works on securing the chicken wire

Looking west through the coop, past our work shed and the pond

How to transport chickens in the backseat of your car

Happy girls with lots of room

Jack and the ladies

Much more sensibly dressed than the first time I collected eggs...

The full enclosure, with padlock to prevent theft

A salad for our MyPlate dinner using soft cooked farm eggs

Learning how to cut their necks efficiently

I learned to first bleed the chicken out...

...once the head is removed, the chicken is dunked in a scalder,

a hot water bath that loosens the feathers

After about a minute in the scalder, the chicken is placed in a plucker,

a spinning bin with soft, rubber fingers that remove the feathers.

Learning how to finish the process

After ice chilling and air drying in the refrigerator.

Check out how narrow their breasts are- not your average supermarket bird.

A chicken broken down into eight pieces, with the remaining frame

A whole hen Chef Bill Briwa roasted in his ACAP class at Greystone

Bringing it all full circle, thankful for the experience.

Thanks to all the friends who guided and supported us along the way- Douglas, Jorge, Brett and Alejandro; Dianne Martinez and Dr. Chris Loss of the CIA; and Adam Burke and Jack Gingrich, who took care of the girls at their home in Deer Park. And to the next class of students at Greystone: I hope a flock of hens returns to Deer Park next spring!

What Makes a Great Restaurant Dessert?

2011-09-21T19:47:00.000-07:00

In Baking and Pastry class, our chef instructor Stephen Durfee asked us to consider what makes a great restaurant dessert. He should know a thing or two about it- he was the Pastry Chef at The French Laundry for years before coming to CIA-Greystone.

Thrilled at the chance to get esoteric and wax philosophical (can you tell I'm my father's daughter), I wrote the following essay.

What Makes A Great Restaurant Dessert?

Why do we order dessert even when we’re already full? What is it that makes a dessert desirable? For starters, dessert tastes good, or at least it should. Durian ice cream, peanut crumble and fish sauce caramel could be a dessert, but it’s unlikely, because it won’t taste good to most diners. Chocolate, strawberry ice cream, chantilly: these ingredients appear and reappear in our dessert language because they taste so darn good. Yet, when we start to ponder what really makes a dessert memorable, we yearn for more than just sweetness.

Let us consider the physical particulars of a dessert. It should be interesting to the mouth. A great dessert has smooth elements, crunchy, crispy, crackly elements. Some ingredients are hot and vivid, while others are chilled and stoic. I remember with pleasure a simple dessert at Kokkari in San Francisco: Baklava ice cream. Well-made vanilla ice cream, not too much fat masking the taste on my tongue; with crispy, caramelized edges of baklava folded in. Neither the baklava nor the vanilla was a taste revelation, but the two textures together were a home run. That dish represents one definition of a great restaurant dessert: simple, well-executed, delicious, and texturally interesting.

A great restaurant dessert should also be visually pleasing. Depending on the type of restaurant, a dessert’s appearance can vary widely; however, it should be sexy. It does something for you. It sizzles, it smokes, it makes your mouth feel things it’s never felt. A slice of mile high apple pie, though lovely at Aunt Bess’ house, does not qualify as a great restaurant dessert because it’s not sexy. It’s squat, it’s cloying, it’s not elegant.

In contrast, a great restaurant dessert is seductive. A great restaurant dessert is a striking lady across the bar who makes you want to order one more drink to go talk to her. It doesn’t lay it all out there on the table, much like an intriguing person isn’t the man who speaks the loudest or the gal in the shortest dress. Rather, a great restaurant dessert tempts with a few words on the menu, free of technical jargon and superfluous prepositions. Then, it surprises with compositions not previously imagined, just in the way a provocative conversation flows in unforeseen directions. Consider a dessert from Alinea that promises “chocolate ganache,” but fascinates with the addition of gelatin that makes it moldable. Have you had chocolate ganache before? Sure! But not chocolate ganache like this.

I never ate at El Bulli, but I’m enthralled by their avant-dessert Natura, which featured fruit treated in multiple ways: pickled, candied, freeze-dried, fresh. It’s as if the El Bulli kitchen was in love with the multiple personalities of fruit, unable to pick just one to highlight. The dish is a culinary version of Picasso’s Cubist portraits: a simultaneous depiction of one object from multiple vantage points. Sexy, intriguing, even confusing, a great restaurant dessert is a challenge.

In conclusion, a great restaurant dessert captivates with taste, visual appeal, textural interest and often cultural reference. Call it a beautiful lady, a technical wonder, a Cubist painting, or just call it delicious. We may be full, but we’ll order it anyway.

More from the Greystone Garden

2011-09-08T20:51:00.000-07:00

A little over a year ago, I wrote about our student garden. At the time, I was just falling in love with gardening and growing our own food. Fast forward one year: our two acre plot on the Napa River is bursting with produce, thanks to the hard work of a core group of students who love cooking and working under the California sun.

Easter Egg Radishes

Summer Squash Zucchini with blossoms

Jack weighs a boatload of Padron peppers in our school purchasing department

Yours truly, with a snakeskin shedding from our garden snakes, Frank and Gina.

Today's ridiculous late-summer haul, with over 150 pounds of tomatoes, 30 pounds of pears, 20 pounds of figs and zucchini, apples and basil to boot.

Our garden manager Dianne, with Lucas and pup Bruce.

Left: Harvesting San Marzano tomatoes as the sun comes up over Saint Helena.

Last year's blog post about my love for the garden included more words, more reflection, more poetic waxing. Those emotions run deep for me, and I still love the garden even as it takes up more and more of my time.

This year, rather than writing so much, I'm actually spending every afternoon there. The best thing is- our kitchens at school are using all the produce. And we're shortening the food supply chain, one tub of heirloom tomatoes at a time.

Special thanks to Dianne Martinez, Jack Gingrich, Adam Burke, Caitlin Henriksen, and all the Greystone students who work to keep the student garden growing.

Eat Here Now- The Alembic

2011-09-07T22:41:00.000-07:00

One place I'm stoked on these days: the Alembic in the Haight in San Francisco. I've been several times since the beginning of the summer, and I'm convinced it's one of the best places in the city. It's tiny, so it may take a while to get a table. That's fine by me because their cocktail list is extensive and intriguing: Gold leaf? Check. Peanut-infused whiskey? Check check. That's probably why GQ magazine named them to their Best Cocktail Bar list last year. But the food really steals the show. The bar snacks go way beyond wings; think duck hearts and togarashi popcorn. Nasturtiums from the backyard garden pepper up the Nectarine and Burrata salad. Or try the beef tongue sliders to break the boring bite-size burger mold.

Right: Bone Marrow with Caper Gremolata and Garlic Confit. Brash. Decadent. Delicious.

Below: My friend Jon Boncek shooting Chef Ted Fleury's beautiful Hiramasa Crudo

Essentials:
The Alembic
1725 Haight Street
San Francisco
(415)-666-0822
M-Thur 5pm-1am
F-S 12noon- 1 am

Gardening at Greystone

2010-07-21T21:42:00.000-07:00

"What happened to your face?" Rosario suddenly asked me the other day. My friend in the dish room at school was deeply concerned about the sunspots on my cheeks. I explained to her that I often get funny pigmentation on my skin in the summertime, underscoring that it was totally fine because I'm actually trying to look like a catcher's mitt by the time I'm 40.

But seriously, the real reason for my super dark complexion these days is the amount of time I've been spending in the student garden here at Greystone. The work can be exhausting, but I consider it an opportunity to get three birds with one stone: gardening, exercise AND some stress-busting vitamin D production all at once.

Located between Highway 29 and the Silverado Trail on Deer Park cross road, our two acre garden plot is not impressive at first glance. Started four years ago by a small, dedicated group of students, the student garden is neither well-funded nor perfectly organized. We don't weed every day. The chain link fences that divide our plot from neighboring vineyards wouldn't mesh with a landscape architect's vision for a Napa Valley garden.

Somehow, none of that matters. I've wandered the neatly manicured rows of the French Laundry garden, across the street from that temple of haute cuisine in Yountville. I've poked around Brix' beautiful beanstalks and I've picked perfect parsley from Plump Jack's herb garden in Squaw Valley. I love our garden the best, if only because it's ours.

Our student garden has hay bales all over the place, but we know that hay, when strewn over the rows of plants, will help retain moisture. The fava bean remnants have been laying around for weeks, but that's only because we were waiting for them to dry out so we could clear the rows easily with a rake. The rose bushes need to be trimmed. Sometimes, the irrigation tape running the length of the rows will spring a leak, and pools of excess water- and weeds- will erupt uninvited.

But when smitten, we see what we want to see, and all I see is beauty.

Left: Serrano chiles waiting to spice up my avocado salsa verde

On days when I feel overwhelmed in the kitchen, I long for the garden. Cooking challenges me, but gardening soothes me. An afternoon in the garden erases bad knife skills, missed plating window times and disappointing dishes. An afternoon in the garden reminds me that cooking is only the final expression of a long, delicate process of coaxing dirt and seed to bear fruit. An afternoon in the garden gives me cotton-candy sweet sungold tomatoes and eggs with golf-ball sized golden yolks. Edible flowers pop with color that begs to brighten my dinner salad. Blackberries tease me with a few winners but mostly still-bitter fruit. I see geese swoop down to the irrigation pond in perfect formation, while our garden manager, Luis, tells me jokes that shake my ribs with laughter.

Soon-to-be-blackberries

Do I sound like my father the poet, waxing philosophical about dirt, flowers and weeds? The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, I suppose. But things are happening in the garden this summer, both with vegetables and flowers, and within me. I feel closer to the person I want to be.

Now if only I could remember to wear sunscreen.

When we have enough of it, we sell our produce at the St. Helena Farmer's Market. Left: Our price board from the season's first market in May.

Edible flowers and herbs for sale

The gallina girls

Sungold tomatoes at various stages of ripeness

Sunflowers in bloom

Dusk at the garden

Did you know...? Nigiri and Sushi

2010-07-20T14:56:00.001-07:00

...what nigiri means? or sushi for that matter?

Whether I go to Blue Ribbon in New York, Mamasake in Squaw or Fuki Sushi in Palo Alto, I love getting nigiri sushi. But before our Cuisines of Asia class today, I never really knew what I was ordering.

Nigiri is a thin slice of fish laid over an elongated ball of rice, with fresh wasabi underneath for some punch.

However, the word nigiri means finger, and the name comes from both the thin, curved shape of the fish and the hands that create it. The elegant curve is meant to evoke a fish jumping clear out of water. Gorgeous, right?

Sushi itself refers to the rice, not the elaborate rolls we have come to equate with the name. Su- means vinegar and shi- refers to the cooked rice. Thus, the most important element in sushi is the quality of the rice. Supermarket sushi rice is invariably a cold, sticky mess, more closely related to wallpaper paste than the melt-in-your-mouth quality of good sushi rice.

Once we get the rice down, the fish element poses a larger question: what about the health of our oceans? A recent New York Times Magazine cover story warned of the end of blue fin tuna and the decline of our fisheries. How do I reconcile my love of sushi with a desire to be sustainable as well?

Here at school, our instructors frequently point us to the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch for the latest information on sustainable fisheries. There's even an iPhone app for that! You can search by fish or by region, and Seafood Watch will rate how sustainable your choice is. Now it's easy to have your cake...er, fish and eat it too.

Tip of the Day: Cleaning A Pan with a Burned Bottom

2010-07-13T14:46:00.000-07:00

I learned today's tip from the ladies in the dish room at Greystone. Day after day, they take our scorched, greasy pans and clean up our mistakes without grumbling. I've burned a couple pans pretty bad, but they taught me how to release the nasty, tough bottom layer without hours of soaking or scrubbing.

Fill the pot with enough water to cover the burned area and place it back on the stove. Turn the burner on to medium-low and just let it simmer. In the meantime, do other dishes. Try to make the dish over again, this time without the bitter, burnt taste. Or, if the creation can be salvaged, go ahead and eat. Twenty minutes at a low simmer will release the burned crust easily. Simple as that!

The Key to Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies

2010-07-08T09:47:00.001-07:00

Everybody loves a good chocolate chip cookie; they're simple to make AND they're wonderfully delicious. The recipe I've been using for years came off the Toll House chocolate chips bag. I love how easy the measurements are with just one stick of butter and one egg.

However, recent conversations with Corrie Beezley, a Greystone graduate who now runs her own cookie bakery The Farmer's Market Pantry, revealed that I've been missing two important components in cookie baking: 1) I haven't been using enough brown sugar, and 2) the cookie dough should be baked from frozen, not room temperature.

Following Corrie's advice, I tweaked my recipe a little. Instead of equal parts brown and white sugars, I upped the brown sugar ratio. I also used room temperature butter and egg, and then froze the scoops of dough before baking. This technique prevents the dough from melting across the pan. Cold butter holds it shape better and produces a taller cookie, rather than the flattened pancake type I've struggled with for years. Be patient with first, the butter coming to room temperature and second, the freezing process before baking. By freezing the dough, I finally achieved the moist, chewy cookie I've been trying to bake for years.

Notice I'm not saying they're the best EVER- those of us who have been to Wildflour Bakery in Squaw Valley know that would be a tough claim. But this recipe comes from years of tinkering and a few small changes in the method that really make a perfect homemade cookie.

Chocolate Chip Cookies
yield: 16- 2" cookies

1 stick butter, softened to room temperature (do not microwave to soften, this just produces runny cookie dough)
1 egg
1/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1 cup + 3 TBSP flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup chocolate chips

1. Combine the butter, egg, sugars and vanilla until creamy.
2. Mix the remaining ingredients before adding to the butter mixture to insure ingredients are evenly spread.
3. Combine dry ingredients with butter mixture.
4. Using an ice cream scoop, make balls of dough on a plate and place in the freezer for at least an hour. Be patient. This step is the crucial part of the recipe.

5. Preheat oven to 375F.
6. Grease a baking sheet with a little butter, or use a SilPat silicone sheet if you've got one.
7. Place the cookies an inch apart on the sheet, and bake for 12 minutes, or until very light golden in color.

8. When the cookies look like they're a minute or two away from finished, pull them out and allow them to finish cooking on the pan. This technique creates a soft center without over-browning the outside of the cookie. Even if the cookies look underdone when you pull them, another two minutes on a hot pan will finish them off nicely. As soon as the cookies are firm enough, transfer to a wire rack or paper towel to cool.

9. Pour yourself a glass of milk and enjoy!

Tip of the Day: Kitchen Tools

2010-07-07T06:39:00.000-07:00

People often ask me "What is one kitchen tool you can't live without?" While there are a few specialty tools that really make the difference between the professional and the home kitchens, most tools aren't anything nifty or high tech. Specialty stores like Sur La Table and Williams-Sonoma would have you think otherwise; how else are they going to sell that Christmas Tree shaped spatula or motorized bread knife?

The truth is: most of the tools you need are already in your kitchen, you just need to re-purpose them.

Don't have a super sharp chef's knife for slicing tomatoes? Don't have a mandolin either? Use a serrated knife. The teeth will grab the tomato skin while you slice, keeping the tomato from squirting away from you under a dull knife.

Tired of cupcakes, muffins or cookies that turn out all different shapes and sizes? (I've run into this problem when children feel slighted because of a much smaller cookie or cupcake.) Use an ice cream scoop for even amounts of dough. With cupcakes, the ice cream scoop transfers the batter to the liners with much less spillage than a spoon.

For large parties, use an ice cream scoop to portion guacamole, mashed potatoes, and potato or pasta salad. (Just be sure you wash it after those chocolate chip cookies!)

Don't have a melon baller to scoop perfect spheres of fruit or to clean out cucumber seeds? Use a tablespoon measure.

No rolling pin in your kitchen for pizza dough or pie crust? Wash off the side of a wine bottle.

Is the salesman at Williams-Sonoma urging you to buy elbow-high oven mitts made of space age silicone for a cheeky $150? Tell him to buzz off; those gloves only make your hands sweat. Instead, keep a folded kitchen towel hanging on your apron string or just sitting on the counter by your workspace. You're not Homer Simpson in a nuclear reactor; you're a cook!

So don't sweat the equipment, really. Make like MacGyver and get creative with whatever you've got. Nine times out of ten, professional chefs are doing the same thing.

Mango Avocado Salsa

2010-07-06T10:39:00.000-07:00

Summer is the perfect time to take advantage of big, fresh tastes like mango, avocado, cilantro and lime. Make this salsa with grilled fish for a light and flavorful dinner, or serve with a vegetable quesadilla to revitalize your lunch routine.

Above: Pan-seared sea bass on a bed of arugula greens and mango avocado salsa, topped with crispy leeks.

Mango Avocado Salsa
yield: 2 cups (enough for 2 dinner portions, or 1 portion of salsa dip)

1 ripe mango
1 avocado
1 red bell pepper
1 shallot (small, purple onion look-alike)
1 leek (cut off the woody green top and just use the white bottom bit, but trim the roots)
1 ear of corn, grilled and cleaned off cob (see yesterday's post)
1 jalapeno pepper
1/4 bunch of cilantro, rough chopped
1 lime, juiced and zested
salt and pepper

1. If you're using the salsa as a bed for grilled fish, thinly slice all the vegetables and combine. It will resemble a shoe-string salad. If you're making a salsa for chips or dips, chop everything into rough squares.
2. Toss with the cilantro and lime juice and zest. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Tip of the Day: Clean Corn Quickly

2010-07-05T15:48:00.000-07:00

The perfect summer vegetable? Corn on the cob. We're in prime corn season at the moment, and sweet corn on the cob ranks high on my list of things to throw on the grill. Yet, pulling the husk and the silk threads can be a little annoying. The thin silk strands can stick to the kernels, making more prepreparation than you bargained for.

Don't peel the husk or silk before cooking your corn. Instead, throw the whole ear of corn, husk and all, right on the barbecue or straight into a 350F oven for 10 minutes, at least. The heat will cook the sticky silk threads and make them easier to pull off.

Protected in the husk, corn can stay on the grill or in the oven for nearly 30 minutes and be fully cooked through. Leave the corn for a shorter time if you just want to peel the husk and silk, and then boil the corn in water. I prefer to toast the corn "naked" on the grill for a slightly smoky taste.

Summer corn ideas:

Pull the husk and silk back, but don't detach from the cob. Tie with a short piece of twine for an elegant backyard presentation.

Turn the corn vertical and run a knife down the cob to free all the kernels.
Then: Add to a chopped salad with tomatoes and avocado.
Add to any salsa for some bright yellow color.

Stir kernels into cornmeal dough for cornbread; bring to your local summer chili cook-off.

Best Summer Idea Ever: Pizzas on the Grill

2010-07-01T10:26:00.000-07:00

It's the Fourth of July, and everyone has the grill going. If you're in need of barbecue inspiration, here's a list of (nearly) everything under the sun that can be grilled: 101 Reasons to Light the Grill. NY Times Dining columnist Mark Bittman recommends the simply genius (#89 Cuban pork sandwiches and #97 Pound cake) and the playful stretch (#3 Tofu? #10,11 AND 12 Corn, and #101 Olives for a dirty martini. Really?). Filled with mostly good suggestions, the list does suffer one glaring omission: grilled pizzas. Trust me, these thin-crust charred pizzas will end for good your off-again-on-again abusive relationship with the frozen, grocery store variety. Just try it. You'll never cook pizza in the oven again.

But won't the dough melt through the grill? you balk. How is that possible? my friends ask incredulously every time I've made pizzas in this way. The key to cooking a pizza on the grill is heat; the grill must be hot hot hot. Think of a wood-fired oven; those babies are glowing red. By keeping the cover on the grill for at least ten minutes before cooking, you're essentially pre-heating the oven.

The next crucial component is the dough. Pizza dough is easy to make, and can be made well beforehand. Actually, the dough is best if it's made the night before and allowed to rest overnight in the refrigerator. However, if you don't decide on dinner plans until the last minute, don't worry. You can make the dough, let it rest while you prepare your toppings and still be good to go.

This dough recipe comes from my good friend Deborah, a fellow culinary student at Greystone in St. Helena. Though initially hesitant to share her secrets, Deborah eventually caved to my constant pestering after I saw her cook pizzas on the grill at school. The thin crust pizzas crisp up in a few minutes with the barbecue's high heat, and the char marks on the crust impart a smoky, rustic flavor that neither a pizza stone nor a regular baking sheet can produce.

Pizza Dough
yield: about 10- 8in. pizzas

4 cups flour (you can substitute up to 2 cups of whole wheat flour if you like) + additional flour for the counter/rolling out process
2 cups warm water
1 oz yeast (1 little packet)
1 tsp sugar
1 TBSP olive oil
salt to taste (I like 1-2 TBSP)

optional: 1/3 cup rough chopped herbs, like marjoram or oregano to give the crust a little color. I had some dried oregano and marjoram in the spice drawer, I just tossed some into the dry flour before adding liquid.

1. Pour warm water and sugar into a small bowl; add yeast. Give the mixture a quick stir and let sit 10 minutes to activate yeast.
2. In a large mixing bowl, combine flour and salt (and herbs, if using). Make a little well in the middle of the flour.
3. Smell the bowl of yeast; it should smell like a bakery at 6 am full of fresh, warm bread. Add the olive oil to the liquid.
4. Pour the liquid into the well in the flour. Mix well with a wooden spoon.
5. The mixture will be a little wet, so add a small handful of flour as you mix it until the dough is manageable. It should ball up and not stick too badly to the sides of the bowl. Once you can handle the dough, sprinkle a large handful of flour on the counter or on a cutting board (put a wet paper towel under the cutting board to hold it in place). Move the ball of dough to the floured surface and knead for 5 to 10 minutes.

I tend to use kneading time as a stress release. Remember your boss who likes to ignore/berate/harass you? Now's the time to work that out. The more you work the dough, the more you activate the yeast and start the formation of the dough texture that we love so much.
6. Once the dough is elastic, place it back in the mixing bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Let it rest in a warm spot in the kitchen for about an hour; it will grow in size. This is desirable. Don't freak out. Your dough is alive.
7. After an hour, punch the dough down and reshape into a ball. At this point, you can put the dough into a gallon plastic Ziplock bag and leave it overnight in the refrigerator. It will continue to grow in size, but at a much slower pace because of the cooler temperature.
8. If you're using the dough right away, break it into baseball-sized clumps, and roll out into pizza rounds. If you don't have a rolling pin, a wine bottle works. We MacGyver'ed this move at a recent dinner party and it served us just fine. Less-than-perfect circles add to the rustic, homemade quality of these pizzas, so don't trip too hard on the shapes.
9. Lay each rolled out pizza onto a piece of waxed paper, layering wax paper between each one. Put the tray of stacked dough in the refrigerator until just before you're going to make the pizzas; the colder the dough, the better it will transfer from the waxed paper to the grill, and the better it will hold its shape.
10. Get down to it. Clean a hot grill with a wire brush. Lay the dough straight onto the grill rack. When the dough cooks half-way through, it will be rigid enough to flip. Turn it over and then spread a thin layer of sauce, leaving a border all around the edges for your crust. Top with cheese (always less than you think you need, too much cheese contributes to saggy pie a la Pizza Hut) and whatever toppings you can imagine.

For sauce, I like Rao's tomato sauce and Buitoni pesto, both available at most grocery stores. (The ambitious can make their own sauces too; that blog entry is forthcoming. ;-)

Since the heat comes from below on a barbecue and the pizza dough cooks so quickly with this technique, I like to cook my toppings beforehand so they only need to warm through. That way, once the cheese is melted, you know the pizza is done. It also helps to have all your toppings ready in bowls; easy access to the toppings is key to inviting guests to create their own.

Some of my favorite toppings are:

Caramelized onions- thinly slice two yellow onions and cook them in a saute pan over medium-low heat for 20-30 minutes, stirring every so often.
Below: onions at the beginning of the process. Let them cook down until they're brownish and sweet, seen in the white bowl in the photo here to the right.

Your kitchen will smell good enough to bring the neighbors around, and the onions will develop a deep brown sugar color and taste. A good task to knock out while the dough is rising.
Sauteed mushrooms- slice white mushrooms and saute over medium heat with a tablespoon or two of white wine. When the wine is nearly all cooked off and the mushrooms are soft, reserve them in a small bowl for topping later.
Shaved Parmiggiano Reggiano cheese.
Dollops of goat cheese.
Rounds of fresh Mozzarella.
Roasted garlic-take a whole head of garlic, paper skin still on, and place in an oven-safe pan. Coat with a little olive oil and just leave the pan in a 375F oven for 45 minutes, or until the softened garlic can be squeezed easily from the paper. A little sticky, this roasted garlic paste can be spread right onto the crust or dotted onto the sauce.
Arugula or Spinach.
Thinly sliced tomatoes.
Pepperoni or salami.
Grapes sliced in half (really! An unexpected but welcome sweet note)
Fresh basil leaves.

My favorite combination: caramelized onions, goat cheese and arugula on a pesto pizza. Yes, I love goat cheese on everything but this combination of flavors is sweet, rich, slightly bitter and salty all at once. On the pizza below: tomato sauce, sauteed mushrooms, caramelized onions and Parmesan cheese. Also a winning mix of flavors.

Unlike burgers or tri-tip steak, which can monopolize the grill and bring out macho fire-monger tendencies, the grilled pizza party encourages all guests to participate in the production of the meal.

Herein lies the beauty of grilling pizzas. Everyone can top their pizza as they see fit. The only requirement is that we gather around the grill and discuss our topping tactics and techniques with a cold beer in hand and the setting sun shining in our faces.

Happy Fourth of July!

Tip of the Day: Better Grilled Chicken

2010-05-13T05:51:00.000-07:00

It's a midweek evening. You've just gone for a run after work, you just showed the gym who's boss. You come home and you're starving, but you want to make a healthy dinner. You toss a large spring salad, you grill some chicken breast, and you sit down for a vegetable and protein feast. Except your grilled chicken tastes like chalk board dust pressed into a little brick of a breast. It's dry, stringy meat that brings nothing to your meal. What gives?

Here's a little trick to keep chicken moist and healthy:
Keep the skin on the chicken breast (or any piece of chicken) when you're cooking it, and use both a pan and the oven to cook a moist, flavorful piece of meat. Put a tablespoon or two of olive oil in an oven-safe frying pan and let it heat up. Once the oil is slick and viscous (it will slide easily around the pan and look shimmery), place the chicken breast skin side down and let it sear for a few minutes. Don't move it; you'll lose juices and it shouldn't burn if you have enough olive oil. You don't even need to turn it. After the piece has a little color, pop the whole pan in the oven at 400F for 7ish minutes. When you remove it from the oven, the chicken will have retained its juices and flavor, saving you from choking down chicken-shaped cardboard clippings.

I admit that in college I used a Foreman grill to cook chicken, but I'm never going back. The design of the Foreman grill squeezes out any and all juice (read: flavor). Leaving the skin on for the cooking process helps retain those juices. If you're really watching the calorie intake, remove the skin AFTER the cooking process, since the skin will protect the meat from moisture loss and burning. If you're down with crispy, golden goodness, leave the skin on. You'll be reminded that chicken doesn't have to be boring.

Restaurant Review: La Bodeguita del Medio

2010-05-03T18:32:00.000-07:00

Every now and then, we find a little gem that transports us from our immediate reality to a better place. Central Park on a warm May afternoon? Midtown Manhattan is miles away. Skiing Squaw Valley on a sunny morning? I'm pretty sure that sales meeting got canceled. I recently found one such place in the middle of my hometown, and I suddenly feel like I've been missing out on one of the best restaurants Palo Alto has to offer- namely, La Bodeguita del Medio.

The Cuban-inspired restaurant on California Avenue has been the anchor for a blossoming culinary scene away from Downtown Palo Alto. Neighbors include the lovely French eatery Bistro Elan, Italian perennial Caffe Riace, and the recently opened Baume, led by former Chez TJ executive chef Bruno Chemel. After receiving one Michelin star at TJ, Chemel's latest venture into the molecular gastronomy world makes no bones about its goal to secure at least one star.

Did La Bodeguita del Medio inspire these great Palo Alto restaurants? Hard to say, but its presence in the neighborhood can't have hurt. La Bodeguita attracts patrons of all Palo Alto stripes: geeky tech types with more money than they know what to do with, old timer Palo Altans in rusty Volvos looking to connect with Cuban culture, and Europeans tired of the University Avenue scene. In fact, La Bodeguita lures so many guests that last Saturday night we could have waited an hour for a table in the dining room.

Happy with a corner table in the bar, we stayed put. As any Cuban restaurant should, La Bodeguita specializes in Mojitos, that minty, sugary, summer delight that makes bottles of rum disappear. Wanting to appear original, I bucked the trend and ordered a Sidecar. While satisfied, I couldn't help but feel like I had gone to In-and-Out Burger and ordered a small side salad.

With the next round of cocktails, I went for the Mojito and wasn't disappointed. La Bodeguita doesn't muddle their mint (perhaps after a bartender's revolt over the sheer number of mint leaves they had to muddle; they do a pretty brisk Mojito business on a weekend night). I can only deduce that the mint leaves are left whole on purpose. If you chew on a rum-soaked mint leaf at the end of your drink, you get a shot of rum and minty fresh breath.

This kiss-ready cocktail, I'm convinced, is part of La Bodeguita's master plan. The ambient noise somehow encourages intimate table conversation without drowning it out. The lights are flatteringly low. An older gentleman with a guitar sings melancholy but sexy music. It sounds like the Buena Vista Social Club, except it's the soundtrack to your Saturday night.

La Bodeguita does feel authentic as well. Could it have been the server's slight accent or was it the seafood-centric menu? No, it was the mango-cilantro salsa; instead of being on California Avenue between El Camino and the train station, I was convinced I'd just stepped off El Malecon in La Havana.

While La Bodeguita has nailed the inviting ambiance ticket, their food is great, if inconsistent. Perhaps they are resting on 13 years of success, or perhaps it was a busy Saturday and a few things were rushed through the kitchen. Near-perfect dishes confounded at every step. I could not eat enough of the roasted corn salsa and cilantro pesto accompanying the crab cakes, while the cakes themselves were less than memorable. I expected the classic Spanish croqueta, filled with bechamel, ham and cheese. Instead, I bit into a sweet-potato filled, tamarind-chipotle hybrid. Tasty enough, but not what I had in mind.

The embutido plate was excellent. Their Castillian charcuterie flew me back to Barcelona with the nutty jamon serrano and the rusty red chorizo. A seared tuna entree dazzled with pineapple chutney, but the tuna steak itself was an inch or two too thick. The empanadas are the highlight of the menu- crispy, golden half moons of pulled pork and roasted chilis, topped with jack cheese and jalapeno salsa. Next time, I'm ordering six of these, a Mojito and a cold beer to top it off.

I'll be interested to visit La Bodeguita in July or August to see if Chef Lord Stevenson (really? that's his name?) decides to lighten up his fried food focused menu. I love fritters and plantain tostones as much as the next girl, but hot summer weather calls for more than just fries. He seems to have the fresh, inventive salsas down; he should play to his strengths. With summer's harvest just around the corner, I can't wait to get back to see how the menu changes.

La Bodeguita would be the perfect place for a date, an anniversary dinner or a post-wedding party. Don't worry if they don't have a table in dining room; if it's a Friday, they likely won't. Grab a bar stool or corner perch, and survey the scene as it's meant to be: lively, just loud enough and lusciously Latin. If the tasty food and the sparkling drinks don't have you half way to Havana, the man on the guitar will.

Recipe: Garden Wraps

2010-04-22T18:46:00.000-07:00

I'm on a vegetable kick because it's springtime. Everything is blooming and green and fresh and wonderful.

I prepared these Garden wraps for a dinner party last Friday night, and they were the biggest hit on the table. They were also the most simple to prepare. Did I mention they are really healthy?

Garden Wraps, from Sunset Magazine, April 2009

Servings: 4
Time: 30 minutes

1 cup Greek yogurt (I went for 2% fat and I was happy with the creaminess.)
1 tbsp of each: chopped fresh Italian parsley and chives (The original recipe calls for chives, mint and cilantro, I just didn't have all of them. All of these mentioned fresh herbs will work.)
1 tbsp lime juice (about the juice of one whole lime)
1/2 tsp. salt
1 1/2 cups shredded carrots (I bought two big carrots, the loose ones in piles at the grocery store. You can use baby carrots we all have in the fridge, but watch your fingers on the grater!)
1 1/2 cups thinly sliced cucumbers
1/2 cup sliced red onions
1/2 cup cooked peas (You know you have at least one bag kickin' around in your freezer!)
1 package medium size tortillas (Just don't go corn tortillas, and don't go for the taco size, which is too small. I used green spinach wraps for a visual freshness as well.)
2 tomatoes, sliced and chopped into chunks (as if for salsa)

toothpicks

1. Mix chopped herbs, lime and salt into the Greek yogurt.
2. In a mixing bowl, combine carrots, cucumbers, red onion and peas.
3. Spoon Greek yogurt mixture onto flat tortilla. Spoon some chopped tomatoes over the yogurt, and then add about a handful of the vegetable mixture.
4. Roll up like a burrito, making sure to fold ends in first before rolling up.
5. Secure the tortilla wrap in place with two toothpicks. Slice down the middle.
6. Enjoy your fast, fresh and healthy meal.

The reduced fat Greek yogurt, the fresh herbs and the red onion give these wraps all the flavor you could ask for, while the carrots, cucumbers and tomatoes provide crunch and moisture. It's a simple but satisfying combination.

Tip of the Day: Blanch your Vegetables

2010-04-19T19:15:00.000-07:00

A couple months ago, I wrote a short Tip of the Day on whole leaf spinach. While we all know vegetables are an essential part of a healthy diet, we don't eat hardly enough of them. Like the whole leaf spinach tip, today's suggestion aims to improve our vegetable cooking techniques and thereby up our veggie intake.

Blanch your vegetables in salted water that's up to a roiling boil, for just a few minutes. Get a large amount of water boiling, enough to circulate freely around the quantity of vegetables you're going to cook (if you're cooking lots, consider tossing the vegetables in batches). Add a little salt to the water for seasoning, and then cook your vegetables quickly.

Asparagus, green beans, and broccoli- all delicious when cooked properly, but all too often overcooked to gross levels- will turn a vibrant, almost kelly green color after only 3 minutes- that's all you need. Spinach should take just 60 to 90 seconds. Strain from the cooking water with a slotted spoon, and sprinkle with a wee bit of salt, no butter necessary.

Cooked properly, these vegetables are a delicious way to get your five servings a day.

Recipe: Easy Scones with Home-Churned Butter

2010-04-18T18:17:00.000-07:00

Is there anything better than the smell of fresh baked goodies on a Sunday morning?

I baked scones for Sunday breakfast the past two weekends, one in Colorado with my girl Christie and another brunch in Palo Alto with my parents. These scones are similar to biscuits; however, you can add ham and cheese or currants or any dried fruit if you like. The home-churned butter is very simple; you can also add vanilla and a little sugar during the whipping process for a sweet spread on a simple scone.

This recipe comes from my CIA classmate Roxanne Rosensteel, and I thank her for sharing these with me.

Roxanne's Scones

3 ½ cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking soda
4 ½ teaspoons cream of tartar
½ cup unsalted butter, diced
2 tablespoons vegetable shortening (you can omit the shortening and add a little more butter if you don't have it. I tried both ways with minimal difference in the finished scone.)
1 cup milk
1 egg (for egg wash)

1 quart heavy cream

2 ½ in. round cookie cutter
Baking pan

Preheat oven to 425˚F.

1. Sift flour, salt, baking soda and cream of tartar into a large bowl.

2. Rub in the fats until the mixture goes damp like sand. Add the milk all at once; mix briefly and turn out onto lightly floured surface. Knead lightly to form a dough.

3. Roll out to 1 ½ in. thickness. Cut out rounds and place on baking sheet.

4. Brush with beaten egg (if you don't have a pastry brush, use the rounded back of a spoon to smooth the egg over the scone). Sprinkle with sugar.

5. Bake for 10 minutes, until tops are golden brown.

Serve with home-churned butter.

How to Make Cream into Butter
1. Take a quart of heavy whipping cream and pour in an upright mixer with the whisk attachment. If you don’t have a counter-top mixer, you can use an electric egg beater with two whisks, but this will take a little longer; it’s still easily do-able though.
2. Whip the cream well past whipping cream texture, about 12-15 minutes. The butter fat will separate from the water, which will start to splash around the bottom of the mixing bowl while the yellowish butter clumps on the whisk.
3. Pour water from bowl. Spread on hot scones. Revel in delight.

Here's a photo of this morning's spread: fresh-churned butter, poached eggs on tomato-gouda toast, fruit and these scones. Nice little Sunday...

Recipe: Spaghetti alla Carbonara

2010-04-14T15:53:00.000-07:00

I am appalled to see that I haven't written since March 28th. I was on such a roll for a while!

My absence from the blogosphere is due to my recent trips to New York and Colorado, and to our current class block, Skills Development 1. My weekend in New York was another epic chapter in my love affair with the city. Steamboat Springs gave me skiing, sunshine, and smiles.

On the other hand, Skills Development 1 is kicking my ass all over town. Rulers don't lie when I'm trying to dice onions into perfect quarter-inch squares.

But these are excuses. Thank you to my loved ones who have gently chided me to write more often. You keep me focused on my food writing.

To honor that food writing focus, today's post features a recipe for Spaghetti Carbonara from Saveur Magazine. I traveled to New York to interview and try out in Saveur's test kitchen. My visit went well, and starting in September, I'll work a five month externship at Saveur. On the top floor of the magazine's editorial offices in Midtown Manhattan, this test kitchen is my dream workplace. I'll be testing recipes and exploring exotic ingredients all day long. YESSSSSSSSSS!

This Carbonara sauce is easy to make at home, much more so than pesto or a quality tomato sauce. If you can cook bacon and you can stir, then you can make this delicious Italian classic.

Spaghetti Carbonara
For this recipe in particular, it is very helpful to have all the ingredients portioned out into little bowls beforehand. For example, once your pancetta is cooked, it's really helpful to have your egg yolks and Parmesan cheese ready to add.

4 TBSP olive oil
4 oz pancetta (quarter pound if you're asking the butcher)- you can use thick cut, un-smoked bacon, cut into half-inch pieces
2 tsp cracked black pepper
1 3/4 cups finely grated Parmesan cheese
1 egg plus 3 egg yolks (crack the three eggs in half and pour the yolk back and forth between them until the whites have slipped away)
1 pound spaghetti
Salt

1. Start large pot of salted water to boil for spaghetti.

2. Heat the oil in a medium skillet; add pancetta and cook until slightly browned, 6-8 minutes. Add pepper and cook until the pepper aroma is noticeable, 2ish minutes.

3. Transfer the cooked, peppered pancetta to a large bowl (you'll add the cooked spaghetti to this bowl later) and let cool a little.

4. Add egg plus 3 egg yolks and 1 1/2 cups of Parmesan cheese to the pancetta bowl. Save the rest of the Parmesan to top the finished dish. Mix eggs, cheese and pancetta until just combined.

5. Cook spaghetti in boiling water for 8-10 minutes; try a strand to test doneness. It should be just bite-able, not soft or gluey.

6. Before straining the pasta, pull out 3/4 cup of the cooking water. It will look slightly milky, but this liquid will give the Carbonara sauce more body than regular water would without the heaviness of cream sauce.

7. Strain the spaghetti and add to the large bowl of pancetta, eggs and cheese. Toss the pasta while adding the reserved cooking liquid a little at a time until the sauce reaches your desired consistency. I found that 1/2 cup was enough coat the spaghetti without being watery.

8. Salt and pepper as you like. Top with the remaining Parmesan cheese.

Don't be intimidated by the number of steps I've described here. This recipe is really just pasta tossed in a bacon, egg and cheese mixture.

With a pound of spaghetti, this recipe is enough food for a dinner party or several lunch and quick dinner leftover options as well.

Come September, I will be cooking Saveur's recipes, just like this one, multiple times before they are published and shared. I've already started the countdown.

In the meantime, back to knife drills for Skills 1. I have to pass this class first!

Recipe: Avocado Salsa Verde

2010-03-28T14:44:00.001-07:00

It's springtime in California, and this warm, sunny Sunday calls for avocado salsa and cold Pacifico cerveza. I've adapted this recipe from a old issue of Food and Wine Magazine; they found the original recipe in a cookbook from a hotel in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

Coincidentally, my friends Catie and Connor were married in San Miguel de Allende last summer. Throughout our stay, we enjoyed bowl after bowl of guacamole and salsa verde much like this recipe I'm sharing now.

Here I am in the San Miguel outdoor fruit market.

You don't have go to a fresh market like this one, however, to obtain the ingredients for this recipe. Staple ingredients combined in flavorful ways make this recipe one of my favorites. Simple to prepare, this salsa verde makes guests feel special because of the grilled jalapeños and the fresh tomatillos.

Serve with blue corn tortilla chips, tacos and lots of cold beer. Feliz Primavera, amigos!

Chunky Avocado Salsa Verde

2 jalapeños
2 TBSP olive oil
1 small yellow onion, diced
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
1 pound tomatillos, husked and chopped (Tomatillos look like green tomatoes with a papery husk on the outside. Don't worry, even SaveMart has them.)
1 avocado, diced (Cut the avocado in half. Pull the pit. Scoop the flesh out with a spoon and cut into squares as if it were a graph paper grid.)
1/2 cup chopped cilantro (You can omit the cilantro if you dislike its flavor, but I highly suggest including it. The avocado can taste a little too creamy without it.)
1 TBSP fresh lime juice

1. Heat a grill pan. Grill the whole jalapeños until charred. Their outer skin will turn black; that's OK. Stem and seed the jalapeños. (Scoop all or some the white seeds out if you don't want too much spice. Leave the white seeds in if you're name is Trisha Patel and you were raised on chilis for breakfast.) Finely dice the jalapeños.

2. In sauce pan, heat olive oil. Add diced jalapeños, onions and garlic, and cook over moderate heat until golden, about 10 minutes. (At this point, your entire kitchen will smell crazy delicious.) Add tomatillos and cook until softened. Transfer to a bowl and let cool.

3. Stir in cubes of avocado, cilantro and lime juice, season to taste with salt and pepper.

4. Party.

Tip of the Day: Fish Lowdown, Skip the Escolar

2010-03-26T16:39:00.000-07:00

From our Seafood Fabrication class, I've picked up a lot of useful information about the muscular structure of fish and the effect on eating quality.

For example, sole and halibut are flat fish (both eyes on the top side of the body!) that lounge around the ocean sea floor, getting very little exercise. The fact that flat fish are such couch-potatoes means their flesh will taste very mild and will pick up the flavor of any accompanying sauce. For this reason, halibut makes it way onto many restaurant menus.

On the other hand, high activity fish (long distance swimmers like swordfish, salmon and tuna) have very developed muscle structure and highly vascular flesh. Consider the rich maroon color of ahi tuna, or the vibrant pink-orange of salmon; these fish migrate thousands of miles and their flavorful flesh proves it. Flat fish will be comparatively lean because they don't need energy reserves, while high activity fish will be rich in healthy fats and Omega 3s.

One fish with remarkable fat content is escolar, occasionally seen on specialty seafood or sushi menus. Despite escolar's novelty, even the most intrepid eater should skip it. The human stomach cannot digest the chemical structure of the fat in escolar, meaning it causes upset stomachs and other digestive problems (ahem) shortly after eating. Instead, try toro, the fatty belly of ahi tuna. The Japanese market pays top dollar for toro, so it's rarely seen here. Occasionally, toro does make its way to the U.S. If you see it on a menu, ask for a sashimi or nigiri portion- it's beyond delicious!

Oysters!

2010-03-24T15:08:00.000-07:00

After my blood test for shellfish allergy came back negative, I decided to make a concerted effort to try more seafood. Luckily for me, our Seafood Fabrication class is full of opportunity to taste oysters, lobsters, clams, mussels and crawfish.

Picking out my next oyster...

In this shot, I chose an oyster from Tomales Bay, just north of Point Reyes. Glad to know for a fact I'm not allergic to these briny, tasty delights.

The Importance of Salt

2010-03-24T15:01:00.000-07:00

Our chef instructors tell us over and over again: the difference between merely acceptable food and memorable food is salt. We seasoned our boiling pot of potatoes, corn, Andouille sausage and Sacramento Delta crawfish with heaps of salt.

We're talking CUPS went into this crawfish boil. Louisiana native Chef Tucker Bunch (could he be from anywhere but the South with a name like Tucker Bunch?) tossed in handfuls of peppercorns, Bay leaves, coriander and chili flakes too, but the amount of salt surprised me.

The taste, however, was perfect. The live crawfish don't actually absorb that much cooking liquid since they still have their shells on. The potatoes aren't cut at all, and the corn picks up more spice than salt. Lunch was so finger-licking good that the limited elbow room at the counter caused a few spats. Alright, it was mainly me telling others to back off my real estate, but that's only because I couldn't get enough!

I do try to limit my salt intake for health reasons. My doctor reminds me to eat less salt every time I come in for a physical. While lower salt intake does have health benefits, don't cut it out completely. Salt is an essential nutrient and a vital ingredient.

Salt was once the most important commodity in the world. In Roman times, its value was so great that payment for labor or services was often made with salt. Our speech today reflects this ancient practice with the word salary (from the salt root sal-) and expressions such as “any man worth his salt.” It is also reflected in the fact that I love sea salt on everything from dark chocolate to hard-boiled eggs.

For more interesting food facts and history, check out:
Mark Kurlansky's book Salt, a history of the mineral's importance
and Harold McGee’s food lore and science bible, On Food and Cooking

Tip of the Day: How to Get Rid of Fish Hands

2010-03-19T15:29:00.001-07:00

From my photographs this week, it’s clear we’ve been handling a lot of fish. While fresh fish shouldn’t smell foul, it does have that unique aroma that sticks around for quite a while. Clothes, hair, and hands will smell like fish for hours after cutting the stuff. An outfit change and a shower will usually do the trick, but sometimes your hands just keep stinking. What to do?

To get rid of fish smell, wash your hands with lemon juice and salt. The abrasive salt will scrub the last remaining offensive particles from your skin, while the lemon juice refreshes with its clean, citrus scent. After cutting cod, skate, trout, monkfish and salmon this week, you can bet your bottom I’ve been using this little trick a lot. (Just be careful if you have scratches or paper cuts on your hands, the lemon juice will sting!)

Best Suited Cooking Methods for Meat

2010-03-19T15:22:00.000-07:00

One of the most valuable lessons from our Meat Fabrication class has been the linking of various cuts of meat to their original location on the animal. Where a cut of meat comes from on the carcass will inform the best cooking methods for that cut. As a general rule, the further from the hoof, the more tender the cut will be.

Osso buco is a cross section of a calf’s leg bone and its surrounding muscles; it must be slow braised since these muscles exercise with every step the cow takes, and thus produce tough meat.

Consider the tenderloin- a long muscle that runs along the inside of the rib cage, far from the hoof and protected from strenuous exercise by the ribs. It’s not surprising that the word tender is part of its name, nor that filet mignons hail from this region of the animal as well.

The most surprising discovery from our butchery lessons last week was the provenance of the skirt steak, cut from the diaphragm muscle in the belly. Responsible for drawing air into the lungs, the diaphragm contracts thousands of times a day, meaning skirt steak will be terribly tough. Now it makes perfect sense that skirt steak is always marinated for long periods of time; otherwise, it’d be too chewy to enjoy.

It’s remarkable how a simple anatomy lesson can teach so much about appropriate cooking methods. Our Chef Instructor reminded us that to butcher meat properly and to cook it well is to honor the animal that has died for our dinner. I buy that, for sure.

Tip of the Day: Cleaning up Fish Guts

2010-03-17T21:58:00.001-07:00

Today's tip: When scrubbing down countertops covered in fish scales, guts, and slime, be sure to use plenty of soap and water but DON'T scrub so vigorously as to splash your chef instructor with fishy soap scum. Invariably, he will not be amused by your hurried cleaning, and he will use the word "demoted" to refer to your kitchen status post gaffe. True story.

Aside from my total shank on the clean up, I really enjoyed Fish Fabrication today. We cut, from the top to the bottom of the cutting board below: flounder, trout, and Thai snapper.

Here I am with my filet'ed flounder.

Lastly, I get a little fresh with the trout. He was making big eyes at me; I had to!

Did you know... Dry Aged Steaks

2010-03-16T17:24:00.000-07:00

Picture the scene: you’re at a classic steakhouse, the kind with tall leather banquettes, wood-paneled walls and maitre d’s in white tuxedo jackets. The extensive wine list intrigues you, the Bearnaise sauce calls your name, and the dry aged steak must be tasted. If it’s ten dollars more than the filet mignon, surely it’s the best cut on the menu.

But... ever wonder what you’re paying for?

Meat Fabrication class focuses on the different ways to concentrate flavor in meat, and dry aging- hanging large cuts of beef in a temperature- and humidity-controlled room for several weeks- is one of them. Historically, meat products were preserved either with a heavy, dry salt cure or through this dry aging process. The former method gives us prosciutto and jamón serrano (how thankful are we!), while the latter produces the valuable dry aged steak. However, the reason an aged steak is so expensive is because dry aging is actually a form of controlled spoilage; the outer section will have to be trimmed off to reveal the flavor-concentrated center. Once trimmed, the remaining steak is sublime but expensive because so much meat has been lost to spoilage. When you order an aged steak, you pay for more complex flavors, yes, but you’re also paying for a large portion of meat that isn’t on your plate.

This discovery will not deter me from ordering aged steaks in the future; I’m just amazed to learn the elaborate preparations and efforts that haute cuisine requires.

Breaking Down Lamb- Vegetarians Might Get Squeamish...

2010-03-15T15:01:00.000-07:00

Ever wonder what a whole lamb looks like?

The neck is curled up on the far side of the saw.

Below: the hind legs of the lamb get split into their two sides, right through the pelvis.

Tip of the Day: Skip the Pre-marinated Pork

2010-03-15T14:35:00.000-07:00

Ever see those marinated pork tenderloins at the grocery store? I’ve tried the Teriyaki and Lemon Pepper varieties; I thought they were pretty decent, but I was a little worried that I couldn’t control the salt content since they're vacuum sealed. While these pre-marinated pork tenderloins may seem like a convenient time saver, we learned today in our Meat Fabrication class that the meat is actually defective, and these flavor-enhanced tenderloins are the pork industry’s attempt to sell less-than-optimal pork meat.

Left: a whole pig, cut the long way. Thanks to Anne's hand for perspective.

What do I mean by defective? This pork is safe for human consumption, but the reason it has made its way into a pre-marinated package is because after slaughter, this pork meat was designated PSE, an acronym for “pale, soft, and exudative.” Since it doesn’t have good pink color, lacks healthy, firm texture and exudes all its moisture (read: gets slimy quickly and dries out quickly upon cooking), this meat isn’t suitable for pork chops, cutlets or roasts. I have to commend the pork industry for their inventive marketing, but the fact of the matter is these “enhanced” tenderloins are injected with sodium phosphate and flavorings to make a buck on meat that would otherwise not make it to market.

Instead, look for pork meat that has a darker pink color (more flavor than pale white meat, see photograph below) with moderate fat marbling for the best quality. Is Hormel going to send their henchmen to straighten me out? Maybe, but I have been duped before by enhanced pork products; I figured I had to share.

Below, our Chef Instructor Tucker Bunch breaks down a pork loin.

Tip of the Day: Don't Stuff Poultry

2010-03-08T21:11:00.000-08:00

Today in Meat Fabrication class, we butchered chickens and discussed the numerous ways to cook birds. One of the most important lessons of the day was to cook the bird evenly, which can be tricky with whole poultry (whole chicken, turkey or smaller game hens). Because I tend to like rice or apricots or bread stuffing with roasted chicken, I was shocked to learn that it's best NOT to stuff a bird. Wait, what about Thanksgiving stuffing? What about delectable Cornish game hens?

The key to stuffing a bird is using only aromatics (lemons, herbs, or onions) instead of rice, bread or other grain products. Aromatics will flavor the chicken or turkey from the inside out, but they won't affect the internal cooking temperature. In contrast, bulky stuffing only promotes bacterial growth inside the bird. The slow, warm cooking temperature in the cavity coupled with the starchy stuffing ingredients create the ideal, cozy environment for growth if bacteria are present (not quite the Cancun party of sponges, but comfortable, nonetheless).

Heavy stuffing also prevents the bird from cooking evenly. By the time the stuffing has cooked through, you've overcooked the heck out of the bird. No wonder Thanksgiving turkey can be so hard to get right.

While it's true we're months from the holidays, this tip also can be applied to whole roasted chickens, a year-round favorite.

Tomorrow we are butchering beef. Keep you posted on our next lesson!

Tip of the Day: Keeping Cheese

2010-03-04T15:00:00.000-08:00

This week has been dairy overload here at Greystone. Monday night we tasted Mexican cheeses (Panela, Oaxaca, and Queso Fresco) in Spanish Club. Tuesday night's Cheese Club meeting showcased fresh and aged goat cheeses from Vermont. Wednesday was a dairy tasting that involved buttermilk to skim milk and everything in between. In this photo, I'm trying yet another cheese- I can't remember if it was Vella Dry Jack, Farmstead Cheddar or Carmody. They're all blending together!

More important than just eating all these cheeses, however, have been the lessons in how to keep cheese in the refrigerator. Cheeses are actually living things; the bacteria in cheese respire and change the nature of the cheese, while preserving the cheese at the same time. So what's the best way to keep cheese?

If it's a fresh cheese (like mozzarella fresca, feta or mascarpone), keep it tightly covered to retain moisture, and store in the back of the refrigerator to keep as cold as possible. These cheeses are just one step away from fresh milk and should be handled similarly.

If it's a soft, bloomy rind cheese (like Stilton Blue, Brie, Camembert or Mt. Tam), wrap it in paper or perforated plastic wrap; these cheeses need to breathe. If they are wrapped tightly in plastic, their exhalations will cause condensation on the inside of the plastic wrapper and create new, different (i.e. bad for that cheese) types of mold.

If it's a hard cheese (like Cheddar, Gruyere, or Grana Padano), it's alright to enclose in plastic wrap. These cheeses aren't quite as alive as the softer cheeses, meaning their moisture content has pretty much run its course.

American writer Clifton Fadiman once said, "Cheese is milk's leap towards immortality." In respect for the gifts and pleasures of cheese, I think it's only appropriate that we help it towards immortality as best we can. It's just so darn good!

Photos: Desserts at Culinary School

2010-03-04T10:36:00.000-08:00

The gorgeous, overflowing bounty found daily on the culinary school dessert table. This photo collection is dedicated to the "candy kitchen crew," the most precise, talented group of cooks around.

A rainbow of petit fours. As lovely to look at as they are to eat.

Almond Rochers and Madeleine cookies (Proust, eat your heart out).

Mini strawberry cream tarts and Chocolate Bouchee sandwiches

Chocolate Othellos (think high class Twinkies)

Mini Mousse Cups with fresh berries and Dark chocolate coins topped with dried fruits and nuts

Chocolate Coconut Tortes, topped with the coolest chocolate wafer I've ever seen. How do they make those?

Assorted truffles rolled in cocoa

Did I mention I have a terrible sweet tooth? ;-)

Tip of the Day: Ditch the Sponge

2010-03-03T11:56:00.000-08:00

We are two days from taking our Food Safety certification exam, the ServSafe test. Not only do chefs need to be talented cooks, but we need to know how to run clean, safe kitchens as well.

Today's tip doesn't have to do with cooking, but rather food safety. Because the average kitchen sponge is dirtier than your toilet, use a wire brush or a thin, green scrubber pad instead when washing dishes. The thick, foam structure of a sponge is to bacteria what Cancun is to drunken spring breakers: party time. No matter how often you run your sponge through hot water or where you store it, the sponge is just too dirty to be used for cleaning food items.

The wire brushes and thin, green scrubber pads will dry much faster and have less porous surface area, making them less hospitable environments for bacterial growth.

While I prefer to stay away from scare-tactic tips, I couldn't keep the "sponge-is-dirtier-than-your-toilet" image to myself. Don't let this stop you from cooking at home; just cook clean!

The Root of the Word "Avocado"

2010-03-02T09:37:00.000-08:00

Avocados are a hallmark of Californian cuisine and I love them for breakfast, lunch and dinner. But ever wonder where we got the name?

The word avocado comes from the Central American language Nahuatl, spoken by ancient Aztecs and some indigenous Mexicans today. Referring to the avocado's pear-like shape and its bumpy skin surface, the Nahuatl root word ahuacatl literally means "testicle."

Sorry for being juvenile, but I'm never gonna eat an avocado again without chuckling a little inside.

Tip of the Day: Avoid Sticky Pasta with Lemon Juice

2010-03-01T14:49:00.000-08:00

Despite the low-carb madness of recent years, I love pasta. No matter the dish- linguini with cream sauce, spaghetti and meatballs, ravioli, capellini primavera, I love them all- the most important element is how you actually cook the pasta. How frustrating is it when you cook spaghetti but then it turns into that sticky tangle in the strainer?

Two cooking techniques to avoid sticky pasta: 1. Use lots of water (5 quarts of water to every pound of pasta) to dilute the starch released during cooking and to keep the noodles separated.

2. Add a little lemon juice to the boiling water. Most municipal water companies add calcium and magnesium to tap water (giving it a mineral taste frequently called "hard water") to prevent pipe corrosion. While this treated city tap water is fine to drink, the alkaline pH of the water breaks down the noodle surface much faster than neutral or slightly acidic water. Lemon juice balances out the pH of the water and reduces stickiness.

If you're not going to eat the pasta immediately, you can also toss the noodles with olive oil to prevent sticking.

Culinary School Photos

2010-03-01T14:38:00.001-08:00

Maui onions, cipollinis, pearl onions, green onions, leeks, and gingers for our root vegetable tasting. Our chef instructor had us chop these up and caramelize them to taste their differences.

The lunchtime dessert table, which is fully stocked everyday with truffles, cakes, pies, and tarts from the Baking and Pastry classes. INSANE.

Citrus Tasting in our Product Knowledge class. We try Minneola oranges, blood oranges, Meyer lemons, Persian lemons, key limes, Rangpur limes, kumquats, pomelos, ruby grapefruit, I can't even remember them all. We do this tasting for every subcategory of produce (lettuces, root vegetables, apples and pears, cabbages, spices). Definitely beats regular lecture classes.

Germinating Seeds

2010-03-01T12:30:00.000-08:00

I joined the garden club, and I'm learning heaps. Here Deborah and I prepare trays for cucumber seeds. When they sprout, we'll transfer them outside to the garden. When they're fully grown, we'll sell our produce at the St Helena Farmers Market!

CR Johnson

2010-02-25T10:29:00.000-08:00

It seems like only yesterday I sat down to write a blog entry about Shane's death. Yet, here I am again, stupefied as I try to write about the death of another Tahoe friend who died in the mountains. The Squaw community just can't seem to catch a break. Maybe that's because Squaw is just such a rad place that daring, big-dreaming people congregate there, and occasionally daring, big-dreaming people lose their lives pursuing what they love.

CR Johnson died yesterday while skiing at Squaw Valley. It's senseless.

My heart breaks for his sister Kahlil and his girlfriend Jami. I remember a dinner at Kahlil's house last spring. CR had nothing but compliments for his sister's vegetable stir fry and fresh lime margaritas. Jami didn't join us because she wasn't feeling well; the thoughtful CR made her a plate of leftovers to bring home. At the time, I was still in a back brace, and CR wanted to know everything about my recovery: how I was feeling, how my rehab was going, how I felt when I saw snow falling outside. As an athlete who had recovered from a coma back in 2005, CR easily could have turned the conversation into "Well, when I was in a coma, or what happened to me was..." but he didn't. He asked me about me, and he listened to my answer, a rare response from anyone these days, let alone a professional athlete. He always greeted me by name, whether at physical therapy or on the ski hill. He smiled broadly, and often. He hugged people.

The first time I met Jami was at physical therapy. She and CR had come in because her ankle was bothering her. I was stretching my back out, but from my inverted prone position I could see the lemon meringue pie Jami made for the physical therapists. They bickered for the next two hours about who got a bigger slice or who took the last piece.

I wish I could make a pie for Jami today. Would it bring CR back? Never. Will this blog change the sorrow that Kahlil or Jami or all of us feel? Probably not, but I can hope.

CR, you were cool as shit. You will be missed.

Tip of the Day: Spoon-scrape Ginger

2010-02-24T14:09:00.000-08:00

A staple ingredient of many Asian cuisines, ginger is a funny looking root. It's knobby, gnarled and dirty, but you gotta love its pungent aroma. Sliced or grated fresh ginger makes a flavorful addition to a stir-fry or a soup, to name a few of its varied uses.

Beforehand, it's best to peel its tough, light brown skin. Since most of the flavor of the root is concentrated just below the skin, use a spoon to scrape the skin off, rather than a peeler or a small paring knife. A peeler or a knife will remove the skin better, yes- but most of the flavor too. Wash the ginger root well, and then scrape its surface with a teaspoon. It will be plenty clean AND will retain its signature spicy-sweet taste.

Try this recipe for ginger stir fry from Food and Wine Magazine or
this hearty carrot ginger soup, a favorite of mine at Soupa in Squaw Valley Village.

Tip of the Day: Mushrooms

2010-02-23T10:49:00.000-08:00

Yesterday in class, we tried tens of different mushrooms: Shiitakes, pompoms, oyster mushrooms, white buttons, Portobellos, and hen-of-the-woods, to name a few. I had never been wild about mushrooms before, mostly because they seem gross when you grab them from the refrigerator drawer. The cap surface can be slimy, greyish, and spotted- in other words, unappetizing. That's why I almost never buy them. Yesterday, we learned there is a better way to store mushrooms, and I think I'm changing my fungi-phobic ways.

Take mushrooms out of the plastic bag and wrap them in damp paper towel. (This storage method is the best way to keep fresh herbs like cilantro, basil, or Italian parsley, too.) Mushrooms grow from decomposing matter to begin with, so it's best to keep them out of the bag, where moisture and condensation can collect on the bag surface and encourage spoiling and mold growth on the mushroom surface. When you do want to use the mushrooms, just wipe them clean with the moist paper towel and give them a quick rinse in cold water. Never submerge mushrooms in water or leave them soaking because their fibrous tissue will soak up moisture and make them mushy and flabby.

With all these varieties of mushrooms to choose from, I will definitely be eating (and properly keeping!) more fungi in the future.

Here my friend Nisha does her best Vanna White impression with my new favorite kind of mushroom, the Maitake mushroom, also known in the west as Hen-of-the-Woods. It looks like coral, but when cooked, it has an earthy, almost meaty taste and a slightly crunchy texture. DELICIOUS!

How to Poach-Fry Eggs

2010-02-22T07:59:00.000-08:00

Wait, what? A poached-fried egg? That's right, my two favorite preparations of eggs all wrapped up in one. Our chef instructor, Patrick Clark (formerly of California Cafe at Stanford and The Cliff House in San Francisco, to name a few local establishments- he knows his stuff), casually mentioned something about a poached-fried egg he used to top hot vegetable appetizers.

The recipe-less instructions were: "You poach an egg, but then stop it in an ice bath, then once it's cold, pat it dry on a paper towel. Brush it with egg whites, roll in bread crumbs and drop it in pretty hot oil for a minute or so. You'll have a crispy, golden crunchy outer layer with a soft, still liquid yolk inside. It's the best egg you'll ever have." I was intrigued.

Saturday afternoon was cold and rainy, and I needed to do something, anything to raise my spirits. How about some good ol' fashioned comfort food? I decided to try this poached-fried egg to see if it was all that Chef Clark cracked it up to be.

First you poach the eggs. The first time I tried this out, I dropped the eggs straight into water with a little vinegar, but the second time I used an egg poacher with little cups.

Either way works fine.

While the eggs poached, I set up the ice water, which stops the cooking process and keeps the yolk liquid. Make sure your egg is solid enough that it won't break apart as you scoop it out; the little sucker has to withstand not only the ice bath but the breadcrumb roll as well. At 3:00-3:30, the eggs were perfect. I removed the eggs from heat and place them directly into the ice water bath.

If you're preparing other things with the poached-fried eggs, this juncture is a good time to get those items going. The eggs can just hang out in the ice bath until you're ready to use them. In fact, many breakfast restaurants will poach eggs before service and then quickly reheat them in hot water to order. That way, eggs Benedict doesn't take thirty minutes.

Once the eggs cooled fully, I pulled them from the ice bath and let them dry on a paper towel. Be gentle, these babies need TLC! I patted them dry, and then coated them with slightly whisked egg whites.

I rolled them in bread crumbs (if you don't have bread crumbs, they're easy to make, just crush up slices of toast) and used a strainer spoon to drop them into three inches of hot canola oil (not smoking hot, but starting to make that popping sound hot).

I left the battered eggs in the oil for a little longer than a minute; they should be light brown with a dark golden crispy skin when removed. Rest the eggs on paper towel.

When you do break the crunchy eggs open- over a Brussel sprout salad like Chef Clark served at the Cliff House, or over a wilted spinach salad like I had this weekend- the piping hot but still miraculously soft egg will spill liquid yolk onto your dish, acting as flavorful protein-filled dressing.

Though this method is time consuming, it's hands-down worth it. The second time (yes, they're that good, I made deep fried eggs twice in one weekend) was easier than the first, and my conversation with Chef Clark today confirmed that a few attempts is all it takes to master this preparation. I'm hooked; they're insane!

Here's my mom at the dinner table, about to enjoy the chopped spinach topped with the poached-fried egg:

I'll close with my father's favorite photo. Thanks Pop for documenting the event!

Tip of the Day: Get Rid of Garlic Breath

2010-02-21T15:13:00.000-08:00

You're on a date and you want the garlic rolls. Or you're grabbing lunch and the garlic bruschetta sounds delicious. The only catch: garlic breath. Garlic's funky effect on breath will ruin the post-date smooch or the close-quarters afternoon meeting. What can you do if you don't have Listerine, a tooth brush, mint floss and a whole pack of Doublemint gum in your pocket?

Eat an apple after garlic consumption. Apples contain a browning enzyme that transforms the offensive garlic thiols (the garlic compound chemically related to skunk spray, no wonder it's so awful) into odorless molecules. While many raw fruits and vegetables contain this browning enzyme, apples contain the highest quantities of it; consider how apples will turn brown almost immediately after they're sliced.

So grab an apple for dessert; not only is it a healthy choice, but everyone within a ten foot radius will thank you. (And your date might actually kiss you!)

Tip of the Day: Buy Unpackaged Spinach

2010-02-18T15:26:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite healthy greens is spinach. You don't have to be Popeye to enjoy spinach for its antioxidants, iron, and fiber at hardly any calorie cost. Everyone knows spinach is a nutrient-dense food, so why don't we eat more of it?

Probably because the spinach we choose to eat isn't all that tasty. We can dramatically improve the taste of spinach by purchasing whole bunches of the leafy greens, usually wrapped with a long twist tie at the super market, rather than the bags of prewashed baby greens or the plastic cartons of spinach. Spinach plants store all their nutrients and a remarkable amount of sugar in the stems of the leaves, where they would be protected during a winter freeze. This reserve storage location helps the spinach plant survive when nutrients are scarce. When we buy baby spinach leaves without the long stems, we lose the best-tasting and most nutritious part of the plant. Today in class we tried tens of different lettuces and leafy greens; I was amazed at how flavorful and sweet (yes, sweet!) the long stems of spinach leaves are.

So grab a bunch of spinach leaves and give 'em a quick wash. They're cheaper than the prepackaged sort; they're better for the environment without the plastic bag too. Oh yeah, and they taste way better!

Tip of the Day: Keeping Bread Fresh

2010-02-17T10:32:00.000-08:00

Despite the low-carb diet craze of recent years, I still eat lots of bread. Who doesn't? Proof of bread's fundamental importance to our diet can be found in many old sayings: "Give us this day our daily bread," or "Breaking bread" or "That's our bread and butter." However, if you don't keep your bread properly, you can lose a loaf to staleness or to mold. So what's the best way to store bread?

Take bread out of the plastic bag, and store it in a paper bag at room temperature. As water molecules evaporate slowly from the staling bread, a plastic bag will only collect the moisture on the surface of the bread and encourage the growth of molds, the blueish-green or gray-white circles we've all noticed on a week-old loaf. Keeping bread in paper bag at room temperature will allow the bread to transpire a little, without promoting staling like the cold environment of a refrigerator.

I haven't baked any bread lately, so I'll close with the most recent photo I have- the challah I baked for Thanksgiving dinner. This type of homemade bread will especially benefit from a paper bag storage rather than a plastic bag. (Or you could just eat any leftovers the next morning as french toast, like we did ;-)

Tip of the Day: Fresh Eggs

2010-02-16T10:42:00.001-08:00

How can you tell if your eggs are fresh? Old culinary guides advised cooks to feel if the eggs were still warm to judge their freshness. However, since we no longer keep chickens in the backyard or use eggs straight from the hen, it can be tough to tell how fresh your eggs are. Additionally, if you take eggs out of the carton and place them on the refrigerator door or in a plastic drawer case, you might discard the cardboard with the expiration date. So how can you tell?

A fresh egg starts out quite dense. A fresh egg will sink in water, so just place the egg in question in a bowl of water. If it sinks, you're good to go. Eggs evaporate water through their porous shells, thus the longer the egg sits on a crate in a truck, or on the grocery store shelf, or in your refrigerator, it is losing moisture and thus density. An old, spoiled egg will float. So if it sits on the surface of your water, toss it!

Tip of the Day: Keeping the Kitchen Utensil Drawer Organized

2010-02-12T10:33:00.000-08:00

After yesterday's post about using metal skewers to test the internal temperature of meat, I realized I don't have any metal skewers at home. I popped into our school library to look into reviews or recommended types of skewers to buy, and I found another interesting tip in a back-issue of Cooks Illustrated magazine.

Stick your metal skewers into an old wine cork. The cork will keep the sharp tips away from your fingers when you're looking for something else in the utensil drawer, and your set of skewers will stay together. Your skewer tips will stay sharp too, which means they'll slide into vegetables and meat cubes easier when it comes time for that summer barbecue. This trick will also work with the tips of small paring knives or steak knives that don't have a handy storage case.

I guess I didn't really find out which skewers to buy or where to buy them, but when I eventually do get them, I'll know how to store them!

Tip of the Day: Checking the Doneness of Meat

2010-02-10T21:10:00.000-08:00

Ever wonder how a chef just knows when meat is done? When I cook meat at home, I'm always slicing into the thickest part of the meat, looking for color cues or blood levels. However, this practice ruins my presentation, and it lets out all the flavorful juices I worked so hard to create with marinades and searing. So just how do chefs do it?

Take a metal kebab skewer and slide it into the meat so that the tip will be in the thickest portion. Let it sit there for 15 seconds; remove it, and press the skewer tip to the back of your hand or your cheek. If it's warm, your meat is done. This technique works especially well with fish, as fish can fall apart if you try to slice it open to check doneness.

If you don't have a metal skewer, slice the meat but serve it cut side down; that way your guest still sees an immaculate surface, and you minimize loss of juices.

My faithful blog readers will remember my pork cutlet failure; if only I had known this tip back then!

Why do we want so much choice, anyway?

2010-02-10T18:07:00.000-08:00

I'm going to post two videos we had to watch for my Introduction to Gastronomy course, and my journal entry response. The videos were meant to be thought-provoking, and here I am, one full week and several assignments later, still contemplating what they mean.

The first video is a talk by the writer Malcolm Gladwell (Blink, The Tipping Point). He claims that we are happier because we have choice in our lives.

The second video is a rebuttal by Barry Schwartz, a professor of Social Theory at Swarthmore College, who believes that too much choice actually makes us unhappy. Too many choices leave us bewildered and paralyzed and eventually produce self-doubt.

Gladwell's talk is compelling; he reminds us that to celebrate our differences is to celebrate life. But, if you have ever stood in the toothpaste aisle at the grocery store for 15 minutes like I have, absolutely dumbfounded by the choice between Arm and Hammer and Crest Complete Care, then you know what Barry Schwartz is talking about.

If you have a moment, watch them. They're wildly entertaining speakers, and their talks cut to core of our search for happiness. Please comment too; I'd love to hear if people agree, or if you think I have my head up my rear end on this one.

Below is my journal entry.

Though many people had a negative reaction to Barry Schwartz’ TED talk, I found his argument to be quite compelling. His quarrel is not with choice itself, but rather the sheer number of choices in our lives. Schwartz doesn’t claim that choice leads to paralysis, but rather he argues that we have too much choice. Additionally, had Schwartz been given more time to speak, he might have argued that the proliferation of choice is indicative of a larger problem. Instead of feeling cornered by his talk, we, as his audience, are meant think about why we want these choices, why personalized lattes with three pumps of vanilla syrup, no bubbles, are going to make us happy, why we clamor for choice. Schwartz wants us to consider what this American need for choice truly represents.

The answer that comes to mind is our selfish values. One student plainly said, in response to customers’ inane requests at his Starbucks job, “But what about me?!” We are an individualistic culture, concerned first and foremost with ourselves. As Chef Briwa noted in class, Europeans are much more committed to communal eating values than Americans. Instead, we value what I want, not what is best for the group, what is best for the environment, or what is even available. When we say we want more choice, particularly when we talk about food, we are often saying, “I am the most important thing, my preferences should be catered to, my needs fulfilled.”

Perhaps this selfishness stems from the lack of choice in our work lives. This connection became clear to me when I re-visited Michael Pollan’s article, “No One Cooks Here Anymore,” (New York Times Magazine, August 2, 2009), a biting critique on take-out and ‘Top Chef.’ Explaining why Americans spend less and less time in the kitchen, Pollan notes that we work a lot more than we used to, a total of “167 hours- the equivalent of a month’s full time labor- to the total amount of time we spend at work each year.” Suddenly, we are working one more month but it’s still a 12 month year. The demands of our jobs leave us with no choice, but we should be thrilled that Subway now bakes bread in six varieties; garden herb, no way!

Instead of focusing on choice, an empty buzzword now that it’s been claimed by big business and politicians, shouldn’t we focus on just being happy with what we’ve got? I don’t need seventeen kinds of tomato sauce; I’m just happy to be having dinner with my family. I don’t need forty possible crust configurations for my pizza; I’m just glad I don’t live in Haiti right now. I am no Buddhist monk and serenity now often escapes me, yet we can try. Instead of saying, “I want it my way, and I want it now,” shouldn’t we just be thankful we were invited to the feast in the first place? Wouldn’t we all be a lot happier then?

For these reasons, Pollan, Schwartz and I are of the same mind, really. We should cook more because it puts us outside ourselves; we start to consider the needs of others, and we are happier for it. Gladwell’s argument that the proliferation of choice has made us happier neglects the root of the problem; we shouldn’t be unhappy people in the first place. Perhaps we should return to that grateful, convivial mentality, and recognize that we are lucky, that the good of the group is better than solely that of the individual. Perhaps then we will have chosen to be happier.

Did you know...

2010-02-10T12:00:00.000-08:00

...where the word restaurant came from?

Like most things that have to do with formalized food, the word restaurant comes from French. It originally referred to boullion restaurant, a restorative broth that was served at taverns, inns, and roadhouses to revive weary travelers. As innkeepers began to offer more substantive meals than just broth, the name stuck and the broth name came to mean the place where it was served. Cool, huh?

Considering that restaurants used to be places you would go to be restored, to take care of your health, I can't help but laugh at "fast-food restaurants." Maybe if we keep in mind the origin of the word restaurant, we will be much healthier.

Tip of the Day- Buying Fruits at the Grocery Store

2010-02-09T08:10:00.000-08:00

I recently read an article in Gourmet magazine that advised against using "tomato-shaped rocks" that are found in your corner grocery store. Well, what do you do if you don't have a farmer's market close by, or it's the dead of winter and you're- GASP- eating a tomato out of season? Or your bananas are neon-green and chalky but you don't want to wait a week for them to ripen? How can we make the most with what we've got?

Enclose the fruit in a paper bag with another already ripe fruit (it need not be the same fruit). The ripe fruit emits ethylene gas and your target fruit will soften and sweeten because of its concentrated environment inside the paper bag. Tomatoes and bananas are climacteric fruit, meaning they can be harvested mature but hard, but then exposed to ethylene gas to ripen then. This after-harvest ripening doesn't always happen, but this little paper bag trick can improve dramatically the quality of the fruits we buy. Pears, avocados, and kiwis are the other climacteric fruits that will ripen well with the paper bag enclosure.

Tip of the Day- House Plants

2010-02-08T18:22:00.000-08:00

Today's tip comes from the Garden Club here at the CIA; we've been talking about the unexpected benefits of gardening and a fellow student mentioned this tip. When I saw it echoed on the pages of Sunset magazine, I knew I had to pass it on.

Plants take compounds from their environment and filter them as they use the carbon dioxide in the air for their necessary life functions.
Place your smaller, potted house plants by the kitchen sink. They will naturally filter the occasional funky smell you can't seem to get rid of. This practice can also help with persistent bathroom scents.

Better for your home, and less expensive than buying Febreeze!

Tip of the Day- Buying Olive Oil

2010-02-05T08:05:00.000-08:00

There are seventeen varieties of olive oil at the grocery store; you grab one of the cheaper ones because they're all the same, right?
That used to be my mentality. Yesterday, an Italian olive oil producer with a small farm just outside Rome came to visit the CIA, and he taught us some useful things about getting your money's worth when it comes to olive oil.

Buy olive oil in tin cans, or if there are no tin can varieties, get the darkest glass bottle. Since olive oil is pressed from the fruit of the olive, there is quite a bit of chlorophyll in the oil. The more it is exposed to light, the more oxidation will occur. This process will drastically alter the taste of the oil, and detract from its natural peppers and smoothness.

Caponetti's Organic Olive Oil

Buy the extra-virgin variety. It's usually only a couple dollar difference between the no-designation kinds and the extra virgin stuff, so spend a few extra dollars and you can be sure you are getting olive oil pressed from young (flavorful, antioxidant-rich, therefore healthy) olives. If you don't see a designation, as in it just says "Mediterranean olive oil," then what you're getting is probably a second or third press, where the waste (squeezed olive flesh, pits, leaves etc.) from the first press is squeezed again.

Lorenzo Caponetti, the Italian olive farmer, runs a bed and breakfast and sustainable farm in Tuscania, a small town in Lazio 80km northwest of Rome. Check out his website for olive oil purchasing information and photographs of his beautiful property.

Mind your P's and Q's!

2010-02-03T16:06:00.001-08:00

Ever wonder where that saying came from? You're about to go to a job interview; your mom tells you to mind your P's and Q's. Or you're in line for coffee right behind the town gossip; maybe you should button up the juicy talk. It means to watch what you say, to tighten up your program, to hold it together.

Today in lecture we learned that the saying comes from 'minding your pints and quarts," as in watch how much beer you drink. While we typically don't see beer served in quarts anymore, the saying stems from British temperance efforts to get people to drink less. This origin makes sense, because if you watch how much you drink, you won't be a blabbermouth.

Tip of the Day: Peeling Eggs

2010-02-03T15:54:00.000-08:00

If you like healthy protein on the run, hard-boiled eggs are hard to beat. They provide an instant kick of energy, suppress hunger with their high protein content, and are pretty easy to toss in a pocket for later.

However, hard-boiled eggs that are several hours removed from boiling (or have been sitting in the fridge for a while) can be really annoying to peel. The shell breaks into little bits, sticking to the egg white with confounding persistence. Our breakfast buffet here at the CIA includes hard-boiled eggs, and I have spent the last several mornings picking at eggshells for a longer time than I would like.

So I asked a chef instructor, and I learned that a quick hot water bath followed by a cold water dunk will recreate the last minutes of boiling, and thus tell the eggshell to release its desperate, clinging hold.

You're at work, you say, and don't have a stove-top laying around? A cup of hot coffee (don't worry, the coffee won't flavor your snack, the shell is still on!) and a cup of water is really all you need. It's the temperature change that will help you peel that egg.

Tip of the Day- Freezing Meat

2010-02-01T14:11:00.001-08:00

What is the best way to freeze meat? We all grab an extra package of ground beef or some chicken breasts for that day when we want protein for dinner but all we have is a box of pasta and some Prego tomato sauce. Toss the meat in the freezer for a rainy day, right?

Well, sometimes the meat will go bad, or freezer burn will get to the steak before we can. Or some freeze jobs seem to damage meats worse than others, leaving us with a texture terribly far from the original quality of the meat.

There are better ways to freeze meat to reduce texture damage and to prolong its freezer shelf life.

The faster the meat freezes, the better. Put your freezer at its coldest setting, divide meat up into the smallest workable pieces, and freeze it unwrapped until solidified. Then wrap as tightly as possible with plastic wrap.

A quick freezing reduces the size of the ice crystals, and smaller ice crystals mean less damage to the protein cell membranes. Reduce this cell damage= keep better meat texture.

Even with rapid freezing and proper wrapping, meat will oxidize, noticeably decline in flavor, and eventually spoil. Here's a short chart with the approximate time that it will take for quality to decline significantly.

Ground beef, cooked meat: 1 month
Fresh fish and poultry: 1-2 months
Pork: 6 months
Lamb and Veal: 9 months
Beef: about 1 year

*from my new bible, Harold McGee's "On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen," 2004, Scribner.

Tip of the Day- Stopping Onion Eyes

2010-01-27T18:06:00.000-08:00

After rereading my post from yesterday, I realized I could answer my own question and figure out a way to stop crying.

Wearing ski goggles provides more funny stories than actual relief from irritation. (True story: I once came home to a late-night cooking session in which a drunk roommate had ski goggles on while chopping onions for a quesadilla. Hilarity ensued.) Goggles don't work very well because the sulfur product released by chopping still lands in your nose and attacks nasal nerve endings.

The solution Harold McGee offers in our useful textbook, "On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen," is to minimize the excretion of the sulfur product in the first place.

Soak your unpeeled onions first in ice water for 30-60 minutes. The cold water will minimize the release of the tear-producing sulfur. Then when you go to cut your onion, these acidic molecules won't reach your nose and eyes.

Voila'!

Goggles: good for sunny days on the hill, not so good in the kitchen.

Tip of the Day- Keep the Root when Chopping Onions

2010-01-27T17:45:00.000-08:00

We use them for everything, but chopping onions can be annoying. I say annoying not only because they make us cry (if you have contacts, you're lucky! You have less surface area exposed to the irritating compound) but also because their layered structure easily falls apart.

Today's tip is two-part:
1) Use a sharp knife- the less your onion gets pushed around, meaning the better your knife slices right through it, the better the onion will hold its shape.
2) Keep the root of the onion attached; don't slice the root end off. Peel the onion, slice the shoots coming out the top, and then cut it lengthwise through the root. This cut will leave you with two halves of an onion, its layers held together by the still-attached root. Make your vertical cuts with the grain, careful not to cut all the way through the root end, and then turn 90 degrees and make your little squares. When you get to the root end, your last cut will free the root and then you can toss it, just like you would have earlier.

The onion wants to hold itself together; I just had been cutting off the root prematurely and thereby making my life harder.

Now if only I could figure out a way to stop crying...

Tip of the Day: Easy Wine Pairing

2010-01-26T23:29:00.000-08:00

Tonight I went to a Wine Club meeting. In between pretentious comments from aspiring sommelier classmates ("Don't be afraid to let this chard open up, it's not performing yet" or "If I was on my death bed, I'd have to choose old red Burgundy"), I did pick up a very useful tip.

When in doubt about what to pour, pick a dry rose wine.

Pink wines have lost the negative connotations of the past, namely because roses these days have nothing to do with white zin. Rose is a really flexible wine because it has the refreshing quality of white wine but a little more structure like a red. A dry rose won't be sweet or syrupy, which makes it a great partner for those in-between foods.

What goes with this salad nicoise with seared tuna?

What goes with spicy Indian food?

What about a lean meat, like tenderloin? If there isn't much fat to cut through, do I need the tannins of a bigger red?

No, you don't. Try a rose.

Tonight we drank a Barnard-Griffin Sangiovese Rose 2008 from the Columbia Valley in Washington state. Easy to drink and delicious with the spicy Indian potatoes.

I'm learning about wine by leaps and bounds here, and I get to drink it!

Soooo Gigi Profiles Me!

2010-01-26T23:21:00.000-08:00

How's this for meta-blogging?

My friend Gigi Ouf has a blog that focuses primarily on fashion, style, and being fabulous. Think LA flash plus London cool plus New York edge minus Paris prices. Now you know why I take notes from her.

She was kind enough to feature me as her Best Friend Friday subject, and our interview can be read here.

http://gigiouf.blogspot.com/2010/01/bff-friday_22.html

Gigi, thank you for profiling me! The simple act of answering questions always provokes thought; you've given me inspiration for my own blog.

Culinary Confidential: Day Two

2010-01-26T11:59:00.000-08:00

After eight months of planning, I have started at the Culinary Institute of America- Greystone. It sounds ominous when I say it in that way, akin to a wedding or some other-CIA executed task force, but the long wait was worth it. I am loving it here.

We don't actually start in the kitchen for another three weeks, which is a bit of a tease. I'm currently sitting in an empty classroom, with a computer and white board and rows of desks and chairs, while I can hear, not fifty yards away, pots and pans and stoves and knives making all the familiar kitchen chatter that I know so well.

I'm surrounded by perfectly stocked dry storage closets, every spice you can possibly name, dairy walk-ins with three types of heavy cream and cheeses galore, Viking ranges at every turn, spacious countertops, Le Creuset wares hanging on the wall because there's too many of them to fit on the rack, knives and more knives- and yet I am not cooking.

I still have three weeks of history, Introduction to Gastronomy, Writing, Mathematics and Food Safety classes before we can start cooking. It would be like sending an adolescent boy to a party at the Playboy mansion but then telling him he has to stay inside and play checkers. Serious tease.

But I will wait happily, because the classes we have at the moment are interesting. I am enjoying reading and studying after three years away from academic pursuits.

For example, last night we read the introduction to J. Jacobs' book "A History of Gastronomy," in which he describes our hunger as the driving force behind our evolution. As our hunger forced us into further and more complicated searches for food, our brain grew: our ancestor might have remained a "dim-witted quadruped had his new-found appetite for meat not impelled him to stalk bigger, faster game." Hunting therefore changed our feet, our posture, and ultimately, our brain. We are the animal we are today because of our hunger. Fascinating!

Or consider the question posed in Flandarin's essay "The Humanization of Eating Behaviors": when did humans go from eating whatever we could get our grubby hands on to eating what we choose? "When did human beings begin to choose among the foods provided by nature and what rules guided their choice?" For surely, what we eat now is a choice, and we are dizzied by the options out there. Humans are omnivores in the truest sense of the word, in that we eat everything. Cannibalism? Insects? Intestines? Frogs? Check all of the above, somebody somewhere eats 'em. So how do we make our choices? And are we better or worse for those choices?

Can you see how a cooking, thinking girl would just be beyond the moon in my shoes? Because I am.

Off to Math class. Finally I'll get good at Fahrenheit to Celsius conversions or remembering cups in a quart in a gallon versus a liter conversions.

More tonight!

Banana Bread

2010-01-22T17:25:00.000-08:00

As the old saying goes: When life gives you overripe, mushy, brown bananas, make banana bread.

I came home to my parents' house on Wednesday and started poking around the kitchen, as I always do. In the freezer, I found two bunches of frozen, overripe bananas, just begging for someone to make banana bread.

I decided to take advantage of the opportunity to side-by-side test two recipe variations. I love regular banana bread, but from my childhood I vividly remember enjoying my Tita Bea's recipe that includes coffee grounds for crunch and an unexpected flavor punch. For some reason, I'm not wild about nuts in my banana bread. Just doesn't do it for me.

I used the following recipe, with the addition of one tablespoon of fine ground Pete's French Roast coffee to only the second loaf:

* 4 bananas, smashed (if frozen, allow to defrost in fridge or sink)
* 1/2 cup (1 stick) melted butter
* 3/4 cup sugar
* 1 egg, beaten
* 1 teaspoon vanilla
* 1 teaspoon baking soda
* Pinch of salt
* 1 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour
* optional: 1 tbsp ground coffee

Mix bananas and butter together, then add sugar, egg, and vanilla. Sift flour, baking soda, and salt (and coffee, if using) and add to banana mixture. Pour into a bread loaf pan, and bake for one hour at 350 degrees F. When the top is browned, and firm but spongy to the touch, it's done.

(This recipe is a slight variation of a recipe I found at the Simply Recipes website
http://elise.com/recipes/archives/001465banana_bread.php
but I upped the butter. Sorry for loving butter.)

Here is a shot of my Christmas present at work, the Kitchenaid Countertop Professional 6 quart mixer. SO PIMP! Thanks Mom and Ben!

The smell alone of banana bread in the oven should be reason enough to try this recipe. Our kitchen smelled like a warm, inviting tea house, which was the perfect contrast to the pouring rain outside.

I also used this side-by-side test to try out two types of bread pans. I have a glass pan and a flexible silicone pan that can be pulled away from a loaf. I had been wondering which one would work best, as banana bread sometimes sticks to the bottom and break off in chunks as the finished loaf is removed.

The end result:
I think the plain banana bread is the best. The loaf with the coffee grounds was delicious, but it was almost too much new flavor, the banana-ness of the loaf was obscured. Though the coffee addition was an interesting tweak to a favorite, I preferred the plain banana bread. Perhaps my parents- even more coffee addicts than I am- liked the coffee loaf; they didn't say one way or the other.

As for the pans, the glass pan did not mangle the banana bread, primarily because it was properly greased with butter (sorry for loving butter). The silicone pan, while very convenient, easy to use, and novel in color (hot pink), didn't hold the shape of the loaf. I ended up with a fat cousin of the regular banana bread, because the weight of the dough pushed the flexible sides of the pan outward. Aesthetically, the glass pan produces a better loaf. Call me superficial, but looks matter! And the difference in loaf removal is negligible.

Moral of the story: if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Classic banana bread is delicious, and glass baking pans work just fine. You know you have some brown bananas lying around, so bake yourself a loaf, make yourself a cup of coffee like my Papa here, and enjoy a warm slice spread with- you guessed it- butter.

Tip of the Day- Pesky Egg Shell Fragments

2010-01-21T15:03:00.000-08:00

Ever break an egg and accidentally include a small piece of the egg shell? Never, you say? Well, you are a better huevo-handler than I, because I do it all the time.

I recently learned from Geoff, our sous chef at Plump Jack, that the broken egg shell itself is the best tool to fish out the swimming fragment. If you use a finger, the shell practically dances away from you; I get the same annoying outcome with a spoon. However, the half egg shell, with its jagged edge, will slice through the egg white and allow you to scoop up the pesky little shell bit no problem.

Try it, even if it's just for sport because you never drop shell bits into your batter. It's uncanny how well it works!

Tip of the Day x5

2009-12-21T16:57:00.000-08:00

5 Tips to Becoming a Better Cook

By no means am I an expert; at work I am reminded daily that I have lots to learn on the road to becoming a professional chef. However, there are a couple general practices I've learned that have helped me a lot and made cooking more enjoyable. I hope they can do the same for you, my dear reader:

1. Take care of your knives. Knives are the most basic tool a cook owns; even without fire, a knife can make a meal. Never put knives in the dishwasher (I know our moms told us this rule, but I forgot it once in front of our chef and I will never forget it again). A little soap and water will certainly be enough cleaning. With sharper knives, chopping and slicing are easy tasks instead of frustrating (or even dangerous) chores.

2. Cook clean. By cooking clean, I do mean hygenic, but I also mean keep a clean work station. Wiping counters as you go, washing tools while sauces simmer or bread bakes- all of these little moves while cooking contribute to a better work station. When cooking at home, these little steps mean you have less to clean afterwards, when the food coma has set in.

3. Be resourceful. Can the little celery leaves from the center stalks be used to garnish even the most simple plate? Can last night's roast chicken be sliced elegantly for a chicken Caesar? Can I keep my stale bread ends for croutons or bread pudding desserts? Yes! Think of your leftovers and trimmings not as scraps but as pieces of a larger puzzle. You'll be amazed how you can lower your food costs.

4. Follow a recipe. Unless you absolutely 100% remember every little piece to a recipe, be sure to read what you're about to do. Respect the food you're cooking; a haphazard, slapdash approach to a dish will show. It is important to a have a feel for what you're cooking, but until you really know flavors and ratios, freestyling can backfire, like my homemade tomato sauce that was more like an oregano-thyme smoothie. Yuck.

5. Go for it. The only way to learn to cook and to improve is to do it. Cook new things, recipes you've never considered, use spices you can't pronounce. I've only scratched the surface of the possibilities in the last six months. Cooking is a trial-and-error activity. What's the worst that could happen? You get to eat your mistakes!

Tip of the Day- Parmesan Cheese

2009-12-17T12:27:00.000-08:00

I love Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, but I have to admit I sometimes buy Grana Padano or Asiago cheese instead because the real stuff is so expensive. If you do splurge for Parmigiano, a great way to get more out of your wedge is to use the rind. Yep, the rind of real Parmigiano cheese is edible, it just needs to be softened up. You can keep the rind in the freezer until you want to add it to a simmering soup, especially Italian soups like Tuscan White Bean or Ribollita. Give it at least 20 minutes, and the rind will soften and add its salty flavor to your broth.

Homemade English Muffins

2009-12-16T09:30:00.000-08:00

Few things are as comforting as a toasted english muffin. They are crunchy on the outside, chewy under the crust, perfect with butter and soup. I have never met anyone who dislikes english muffins. They're like kittens or pink Starburst candy: everyone is a fan.

English muffins aren't baked in an oven, as I previously thought. They are cooked on a griddle, flipped once to give both sides their flat, golden crust. They are simple to make and well worth the wait.

I used this recipe:

Ingredients

* 1 cup milk
* 2 tablespoons white sugar
* 1 (.25 ounce) package active dry yeast
* 1 cup warm water (110 degrees F/45 degrees C)
* 1/4 cup melted butter
* 6 cups all-purpose flour
* 1 teaspoon salt

1. Warm the milk in a small saucepan until it bubbles, then remove from heat. Mix in the sugar, stirring until dissolved. Let cool until lukewarm. In a small bowl, dissolve yeast in warm water. Let stand until creamy, about 10 minutes.
2. In a large bowl, combine the milk, yeast mixture, butter and 3 cups flour. Beat until smooth. RUTHIE'S NOTE: do not use a hand-held mixer with two removable egg beaters. My first go of things I did, and the dough just wound itself up the beaters and became difficult. Second time, I used a spoon and my hands, and it worked fine. Better, if you have one: a countertop Kitchenaid Mixer with a dough hook. Then Add salt and rest of flour, or enough to make a soft dough. Knead. Place in greased bowl, cover, and let rise.
3. Punch down. Roll out to about 1/2 inch thick. Cut rounds with biscuit cutter or drinking glass. Sprinkle waxed paper with cornmeal (or plain bread crumbs) and set the rounds on this to rise. Dust tops of muffins with cornmeal/crumbs also. Cover and let rise 1/2 hour.
4. Heat greased griddle. Cook about 10 minutes on each side on medium heat. Let cool before storing.

recipe from: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/english-muffins/detail.aspx

The only change I made was I substituted one cup of whole wheat flour with the regular flour. Also, this recipe calls for a cornmeal dusting, which I didn't have. Instead, bread crumbs worked just fine.

Once you cut them with a cookie cutter or upside down water glass, let them rise and then just throw them on a greased griddle. Flip after ten minutes, watching the muffins that are closest to the heat source. My muffins in the center of the griddle browned much faster than the ones towards the edge, and I sacrificed a couple in my first batch because I didn't rotate their positions.

Here they are mid-griddle session:

The finished product is different than a Thomas' English Muffin from the grocery store; it doesn't have quite the spongy nooks and crannies of commercial muffins.
However, homemade english muffins toast better and their heartier texture is better suited to savory and sweet toppings. We enjoyed them with eggs and La Victoria Hot Salsa for breakfast, as well as spread with butter and topped with cinnamon and sugar sprinkles for dessert.

The recipe can be time-consuming; it is about 40 minutes of hands-on time plus the rising time in the middle (which is perfect time to clean up, get in a quick walk, or just watch Jeopardy!). Don't be deterred, though; the recipe is straight-forward and these babies are worth the time.

I have suggested a few toppings, namely the eggs and salsa and the cinnamon and sugar dessert toast. Now I'll end this post with a poll- what is your best english muffin topping? Mini pizzas? Cream cheese AND cheddar? I want to hear everyone's variation!

Tip of the Day Revision

2009-12-15T10:51:00.000-08:00

This morning we made better bacon in the oven, but I have an addendum to my previous Tip of the Day.

Be sure to use a cookie sheet or baking pan with an edge. Flat baking sheets with no edge will allow the bacon grease to spill into your oven or all over your kitchen when you go to move the pan. Commercial sheet pans have edges to contain the grease, and I forgot that little detail at home this morning. Oops!

Also, it took a little longer to cook the bacon in a home oven- about 20-25 minutes total. I think commercial convection ovens are more efficient.

Apart from the slightly longer cooking time and the nasty grease spill, the bacon came out just right: flat, barely crispy, and the perfect addition to a scrambled egg and avocado breakfast sandwich.

Tip of the Day- Soups with Noodles or Rice

2009-12-14T15:46:00.000-08:00

I'm feeling a little sick today, and my sore throat and stuffy nose are asking for a homemade chicken noodle soup. Today's tip is how to make a homemade noodle soup or rice soup that will hold for a few days without the preservatives of canned soups.

Cook your noodles or rice separately, and cook them a little underdone too. Add them only when you're ready to eat the soup; otherwise the noodles can disintegrate and change the consistency of your broth.

We use this technique at Soupa to keep a soup overnight, and it also proves useful if a guest asks for something without gluten.

If only getting rid of my cold were just as easy!

Tip of the Day- Better Bacon

2009-12-12T14:36:00.000-08:00

Bake your bacon.

I love bacon, but it's got to be just perfect for me to justify the grease. I recommend ditching the frying pan; bacon can burn really easily and it tends to curl up into little unappetizing shoelaces dripping with fat.

When cooked in the oven, bacon stays flat and cooks more evenly. Lay the bacon on a flat cookie sheet with parchment paper under it and just pop it in a 350 degree oven for 15-20 minutes. Your hands will be free to cook whatever else is on the menu, your shirt won't be spattered with fat, and your burner will be available for coffee or eggs.

Don't cut the bacon out of your diet, just make it better!

Tip of the Day- What to do with stale baguettes

2009-12-11T14:35:00.000-08:00

I never seem to eat a whole baguette before it gets too hard. I recently learned that stale baguettes can be salvaged as thinly sliced crostini if you pop them in the freezer. Leave the baguette in the freezer for at least an hour; then when you go to slice it, the frozen bread will hold up even when sliced paper-thin. Give the slices a sprinkle of olive oil and salt and pepper and toast in the oven for ten minutes. The thin, golden toasts can be used in refreshing summer hors d'oeuvres like bruschetta or as the perfect garnish for heartier winter soups like butternut squash.

Tip of the Day

2009-12-10T11:46:00.001-08:00

This tip may be old news to some readers, but I recently learned to store tomatoes on the counter, not in the refrigerator. The refrigerated air will make the normally sweet tomato turn acidic. Plus, most tomatoes are picked well before they are ripe, so keeping them at room temperature allows them to ripen faster.

Tip of the Day

2009-12-09T09:27:00.000-08:00

I don't have Eggs Benedict at home as much as I would like, given the calorie total and preparation difficulty of Hollandaise sauce. Today's tip is simple: just skip the Hollandaise and add other flavorful, moist ingredients to create a healthier Benedict at home. While Hollandaise calls for lots of egg yolks and butter, use instead avocado, tomato and a softer poached egg to get all the flavor and moisture of a traditional Benedict without the heavy heart-stopping sauce. With this lighter version, you don't have to be afraid of eating both halves of the english muffin!

Go for a lighter Eggs Benedict and even your plate will smile at you.

Review: The Refuge

2009-12-08T15:07:00.000-08:00

Did you know there was a happening Belgian gastropub in San Carlos? That's right, San Carlos.

I didn’t know, but I was lucky enough to go there a few weeks ago with my close friend Christie, and her parents Mark and Cindy Ginanni. We had a blast.

I have to preface this restaurant review with a note about the Ginannis. Everyone has that friend that can sniff out a good time, knows where to find the goods, always knows “some guy” who can hook it up. The Ginanni family has this role down pat.

Are you thinking about taking a vacation in Italy/Germany/Mexico? Mark and Cindy know a count who is just dying to host you at his villa.

Looking for something to do on a quiet Monday night? The Ginannis are hosting a pizza party around their backyard wood-fired oven. You have got to come drink wine and toss dough.

We once went to the beach in Half Moon Bay but we were met with cloudy, freezing weather. Instead of being bummed out, we used kelp for a jump rope and snapped perfect candid shots while laughing our asses off.

I could go on forever, but I won’t because this blog is supposed to be about food. The point is- the Ginannis are people who got the joie de vivre memo and they encounter great food and experiences because of it.

Thus it was no surprise that they were the ones to introduce me to Refuge, a gem of a spot on a slightly random residential street in San Carlos.

Refuge makes no bones about their primary purpose in life: to serve good beer. They have a beer list that puts most restaurants’ wine lists to shame in terms of size and variety. My two favorite Belgian beers are Delirium Tremens and Duvel, and Refuge had these two plus many more I had never seen. I also love raspberry beer (I know, I’m a girl), so I couldn’t pass on the St. Louis Framboise Lambic. Whether you’re looking for a dark, chocolate-looking beer, or something fruity, Refuge pours your beer any way you like it.

While I’m not arguing that beer drinking as an activity needed improvement, Refuge sure adds a little fun with the different shaped beer-specific glasses. Cindy ordered the beer Kwak only because it is served in a narrow beaker with a wooden coachman’s handle. It’s brilliant marketing by the Belgian beer makers. Why not have another beer? I want to see what kind of glass will accompany it!

The food at Refuge is the perfect complement to its beer-loving identity. We ordered the charcuterie platter, which comes in several sizes. We picked nine items (but you can pick any number you like) from their list of house-made sausages, salamis, and a variety of cheeses. Our obliging server returned with a plate piled so high, we could barely see each other over the slices of crusty bread, the candied nuts, the apricot compote, and the country paté.

Or was my vision going because Delirium Tremens is 10% alcohol by volume? Nah.

Also, the headier Belgian beers pair perfectly with cheese; I loved the creamy Explorateur cheese, while Christie favored the Chimay Grand Cru. Don’t miss either of them if they are still offered on the menu.

For my Bay Area friends who are tired of eating in downtown Palo Alto or the Marina in San Francisco, Refuge is a more-than-worthy alternative. The list of beers alone is reason enough to go; their delicious food is a bonus. If you’re lucky, you’ll see Mark and Cindy, or some other member of the Ginanni clan, and soon you’ll be smiling at ridiculous glass arrangements like this one below and laughing so hard you’ll want to write about it nearly a month later.

Essentials:
The Refuge
963 Laurel St
San Carlos, CA 94070
(650) 598-9813

www.refugesc.com

Tip of the Day

2009-12-08T09:04:00.000-08:00

I've been working in two professional kitchens for about six months now, and I am learning a lot.
I decided to do a (nearly) daily post, not too long, that shares these little nuggets of useful kitchen information. Hopefully, these tips will be news to some of my readers. Everything that I share here will be something that I didn't know before I started working in a professional kitchen.

Tuesday Tip of the Day: When using a cutting board to chop vegetables, herbs, meat, anything, place a damp tea towel or rag under the board. The damp cloth will keep the cutting board from sliding around on your counter top, reducing the effort it takes to chop things cleanly and keeping your fingers safe from errant knife strokes.

Thanksgiving at Home

2009-11-27T12:02:00.001-08:00

Is there anything better than Thanksgiving at home? I have never celebrated Thanksgiving anywhere but my parents house in Palo Alto, 26 years straight. I suppose the day will come when that will change (as it did this year for my older brother Ben whom we missed very much), and I will be very sad to have to skip this divine meal. Luckily this year I did come home, and we feasted in fine form.

I'm probably more than a little biased when I say that our Thanksgiving dinner was something special, but it really felt like it was. In past years, the turkey has been dry, or the cranberry relish tasted a little too much like saccharin, or the mashed potatoes got heavy whipping cream instead of whole milk (sweet mashed potatoes are just plain gross, trust me). Not the case with our dinner this year. Last night we hit it out of the park.

I started the day making bread, and I might have gone a little overboard. I made a loaf of challah bread, braided with sesame seeds; two baguette shaped loaves of classic four ingredient bread (flour, water, salt, yeast); a loaf of sandwich bread for leftover turkey lunch; and cheddar dill biscuits just in case we needed something else savory with dinner.

Here I am with the just-braided challah bread, about to brush it with beaten egg whites to produce the shiny crust.

The loaf rose tremendously, forcing me to move several racks in the oven to accommodate its height. It turned out just about perfect, and what remained after dinner we used for eggy cinnamon french toast this morning.

I also made some macaroni and cheese from scratch, taking Cook's Illustrated advice that evaporated milk holds the macaroni together much better than regular milk. Instead of using massive amounts of extra sharp cheddar for flavor, I opted for fresh ground nutmeg (see the mortar and pestle below), Tabasco sauce, gruyere and monterey jack cheese to accent the cheddar. It was a hit. Trevor asked if it would be weird for him to put the mac and cheese in his leftover turkey sandwich. Flattered, I said no, it wouldn't be weird.

The Goodrich's brought the turkey, brined first and then roasted with mango pits in the cavity for a unique aromatic touch. Coupled with my mother's exquisite not-too-sweet cranberry relish, the usually plain turkey transformed into a moist, slightly fruit-flavored delight.

There seemed to be no shortage of wine, nor laughter, as we enjoyed creamed succotash, mashed potatoes with chives and cheddar dill biscuits with butter. Eric told us of his travels to Peru and Italy, while Trevor explained the banalities of corporate life at his law firm. Elizabeth and I tried to outdo each other with gravy servings, and my dad did his best impression of Grandpa Earl, holding court in our wood-paneled dining room.

The photo, slightly out of focus, is an accurate representation of my vision at the time.

Though everyone was completely stuffed (BUSUG NA!), we soldiered on through dessert, a delightful assortment of fresh creme chantilly, a fruit tart from Douce France, Racki's pumpkin cheesecake with gingersnap crust, and pumpkin pie that had never even heard of canned pumpkin. Did we need dessert? No. Was it too much, almost painful to eat? Yes. Did we do it anyway? You can bet your bottom dollar we did.

While my waistline would suffer remarkable growth if we were to eat like this all the time (no telling how much butter goes in those mashed potatoes, or the number of eggs in the cheesecake), I would be a very happy person. What a wonderful holiday Thanksgiving is.

Why do I cook?

2009-11-24T21:53:00.000-08:00

The title to this post is a simple question, and the toughest philosophical questions often start this way. "Why are we here?" or "What do I want in life?" are easy questions to ask, but frequently impossible to answer.

I realized today what my answer is, at least to my title question; I realized today why I cook. I cook because I like to nourish others. What could be more fundamental, more essential, more life-affirming than the act of nourishing others?

This epiphany occurred at 10:45am, after making my thrice-weekly delivery of hot soup and a sandwich to a 80-something-year-old man who lives in Squaw Valley near the Village. His daughter, concerned that he wasn't getting enough protein and good, hot food, arranged for Soupa to deliver soup and a sandwich every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Good deal, right?

Now, the astute reader will notice that today is Tuesday, meaning I don't normally deliver lunch today. Truth be told: yesterday I forgot. And I felt awful, just awful, positively suicidal that I had forgotten this octogenarian's hot meal. So today, I took extra care in preparing a Soupa club, a triple-decker toasted whopper with chicken, ham, bacon, tomato, lettuce and cheddar cheese. I filled the bowl to the absolute maximum brim with sweet pea and ham soup. I raced to his front door to make sure everything was still hot when I arrived. I cared.

And that is when I realized why I cook, why I love chopping vegetables, why I love tinkering with recipes and spices and herbs, even if I might not make the perfect cookie or the perfect spaghetti sauce from scratch every time. I cook because it provides me the opportunity to care for others. I never liked the holier-than-thou attitude of educational development work in my Masters program. While the underlying goal is the same- to help others in some way- I have found that my style is to share food, rather than push ideology.

Maybe it is selfish to cook so that I can feel satisfaction, so that I can feel like I am helping others. But perhaps the motive is beside the point. I do know that my 80-year-old friend smiled from ear to ear this morning and thanked me by name. There's no better reason to cook, no better reason to work, than that.

More photos from St. Helena

2009-11-24T08:15:00.000-08:00

A midday glass of wine never
hurt nobody. Plus I'm on
campus!

Maya Papaya checks out
the Le Creuset pans as
we run around like kids
in a candy store. Why
purchase seven issues of
Cooks Illustrated, a fish-
specific spatula and
a new neon green ceramic
paring knife? Because you
really NEED them.

Culinary Confidential- On campus

2009-11-22T21:01:00.001-08:00

Last week I visited the Greystone Campus of the CIA, my new home come January.

I had never been to the town of St. Helena, so this trip filled in a lot of gaps in my mind. The downtown strip is filled with old bookstores, overpriced women's clothing boutiques that also sell $20 bars of soap (crazy, right?), and a yummy diner with a long table urging guests to share space with others.

After visiting the dorms, I quickly decided I will live off campus in a house I found a few blocks from school and a few blocks from the town center. I think I'm just too old for dorm life. A note on the dorm kitchen said "Closed until further notice. I told you guys to keep this space clean. -RA" Enough said.

This trip really heightened my excitement about starting school. The Wine Spectator Restaurant where I will finish my training next year serves great food. While I would recommend skipping the pumpkin empanadas, don't miss the prosciutto-wrapped ling cod- UNREAL good.

The campus is worthy of a Travel + Leisure magazine spread. When my mom and I walked into the main building, the castle in the background of this photo, I felt almost inconsequential, lucky to be there, belittled even. The towering entryway, the three-feet-thick walls, the three meter wine barrels in the Napa Valley Wine Makers' Hall of Fame: all of it was simultaneously inspiring and humbling. I may be able to cook a nice dinner, I might nail some homemade English muffins from scratch, but I ain't shit just yet.

I always feel like I have more to write, more to say, but it's getting late and I think I need some sleep. I'll keep my conclusion brief: I'm two months out, and I'm pumped!

Employee Breakfast on Opening Day

2009-11-21T08:56:00.000-08:00

It's Opening Day at Squaw, and I'm waiting for the crowds to come. We got snow last night, not enough for the whole mountain to open, but enough for the plows to wake me up this morning.
I hustled over to Soupa to open for breakfast (shameless plug: we have a killer bacon, egg and cheese sando) and brew some coffee, but no one is fighting for first chair (YET!).
In the meantime, I decided to make myself an open-faced toastie, with onions, tomatoes, pepperjack cheese and a sunnyside-up egg. Add hot sauce and a cup of coffee and I'm ready to ski. If only I wasn't working...

Enjoy it out there, friends! Come get a cup of soup when you've skied out Exxtra-bitchin'.

My desk at Soupa

2009-11-13T12:22:00.001-08:00

This prep station is where all the delicious soups are made at Soupa, the lunch cafe where I work in Squaw Valley. We make all our soups from scratch, starting with the stock all the way up to the herb garnishes. It's a wonderful, sunny place to chop vegetables and people-watch at the same time.

Culinary Confidential- It's happening!

2009-11-11T20:53:00.000-08:00

I am going to culinary school.

Not in some far off, hypothetical, "Man, it would so cool to go to culinary school" way, but rather in a "Starting in eight weeks, I am looking at a massive tuition bill and 4 semesters of school in Napa" way.

Yes!

My ship finally has a keel under it. For a month or so, I felt like a 17 year old in high school who constantly checks the mailbox for the early decision college letter.

Honestly, I'm a little nervous for the following reasons:

What if everyone in St. Helena is snotty and elitist? I guess I survived fraternity parties at UVA, it couldn't be that much worse. AND who am I kidding? I grew up in Palo Alto.

What if all the other students at culinary school have wicked good knife skills? I need to get on the chopping onions practice program ASAP.

What if the instructors are really mean and try to make me cry? I'll share advice from some fellow line cooks: "Smoke weed, then you won't care if they yell at you." I thought about it for a second, but then I concluded that I would burn my hands and slice off my fingertips if I tried to cook high.

Their advice, however, is pretty telling of the culinary profession. Perhaps it isn't true of everyone, but it does seems that lots of chefs operate on stimulants or depressants to deal with the pace and the stress of the job. Is that what I want to become?

No, I don't want to become an embittered, chain-smoking, hard-drinking, principally nocturnal control freak. That model is the kind of chef I would like to avoid. (Enter Gordon Ramsay's photo here.) I'm not going to be Giada DiLaurentis either, I mean, c'mon! Who cooks with that much cleavage out anyway? Put the girls away for a half hour, I can't focus on the risotto.

But I digress. The kind of chef I do want to become is a skillful one. I want to pick up some sweet skills. How I then apply those skills- whether as a chef de cuisine or a test kitchen chef or a food writer or recipe developer or food stylist- is still uncertain. I suppose it also depends on what kind of job I can get. Maybe a cooking instructor would be the perfect job, I could combine my love of food with my interest in coaching and teaching.

I can't know right now how it will all play out. The point is, as my girl Jillian would say: it's happening!

Pork Cutlets with Tomatoes: Fail

2009-09-29T07:54:00.000-07:00

I cooked dinner tonight. It wasn't good.

I cook dinner pretty frequently; usually it's good. I enjoy cooking, and admittedly, part of the reason why is because I think I'm good at it. I came into the kitchen tonight with this little swagger in my step, my cooking ego and perceived abilities flying high following my boyfriend's recent "You've been killing it in the kitchen" comments.

Armed with fresh ingredients from Reno's Trader Joe's (further fueling my overconfidence), I set out to cook pork cutlets topped with Roma tomatoes on a bed of sauteed onions, with brown rice and wilted spinach. Easy, right?

I called my mother for her recipe; I have the warmest, fuzziest, round-stomach-rubbing memories of her pork chops. (The astute reader will notice the discrepancy between my mother's chops and my cutlets.) She talked me through the whole process, from the browning of the pork to onion-then-pork-then-tomato layering with chicken broth to keep the onions from burning.

At this moment, I thought, this recipe isn't too involved. I could even go jump in the shower while they simmer. At least I had the sense to stay at the stove, though now I wonder if it would have made any difference.

The fact of the matter was: I wasn't working from a recipe, but rather a phone conversation, and a scatterbrained conversation to boot. She said to leave the pork to simmer on the onions with the broth for AROUND AN HOUR. That the directions on the pork suggested mere minutes of cooking time, no matter. I was half watching Jeopardy and my mom was driving through 101-85-280 traffic in the Bay Area. We were distracted and I was confident. How could I possibly mess this one up?

Of course, I over-cooked the pork. Pork chops are thick cuts of meat, while cutlets are thin, little cutie pie slices. This mistake was not a question of a few minutes, but rather a quarter of an hour. I knew the pork was overcooked when I went to test its doneness with a slice to the center of one of the cutlets: I could barely get the knife in there, the pork was so rubbery. I might as well have tried to slice cowboy boots with a butter knife.

My loving boyfriend, ready for the meal of century given how wonderful the kitchen smelled with the sauteed onions, was honest. He said it was just OK. He told me it was a lovely home-cooked meal, but it was OK.

We agreed immediately that they were overcooked, and suddenly I felt like a failure. Why is it that a simple dinner- let's be real, I'm not cooking complicated creations yet- can take the wind out of my sails like that? What will happen when I'm really a chef and I get a shitty review? Is my skin thick enough for this shit?

As we finished dinner, we diplomatically characterized the meal as "not my best, but not my worst," which is true, because I once drunkenly spread peanut butter on the outside of a cheddar cheese quesadilla, and that, surely, is my worst.

But how else am I going to learn as a cook? This process of anticipation and subsequent disillusionment with a failed meal is valuable in that I never want to repeat the feeling. That I will repeat this experience is a given. However, if botching a dinner serves as motivation to become a better cook, I'll take it.

Pork Cutlets and Tomatoes Drowned in Onions and Broth

2009-09-29T07:51:00.001-07:00

Believe me, they are under there somewhere. They hung out there for WAY too long. You cook and you learn.

Culinary Confidential

2009-09-14T20:13:00.000-07:00

If the name for this new section of my blog sounds familiar, that’s because I stole it from Anthony Bourdain. He is the New York chef who wrote “Kitchen Confidential” and stars in the Travel Network’s show “No Reservations,” in which he treks all over the world and eats delicious (and occasionally questionable) local specialties. I figure he has my dream job, and he seems pretty damn cool, so why not bite his style?

It’s mid September, and I am waiting to hear from the admissions office of the Culinary Institute of America- Greystone, the CIA’s Napa Valley campus. At the beginning of the summer, I applied to their Culinary Arts program, a 21 month program that will teach me everything about cooking, food safety, and kicking general ass in the kitchen. They don’t market their program with those words specifically, but after the first couple bumbling months, I hope to be kicking ass and taking names. Maybe I’ll be washing dishes and taking orders, like I am now, but I hope not.

I wonder if I am the only 26 year old who feels a little lost at the moment. Perhaps lost isn’t the word, but I do feel a little rudderless. I’m on a good ship, she’ll take me where I need to go, there are winds blowing, but I just can’t seem to steer. I don’t want this culinary school experience to prove as disenchanting as my grad school time at Columbia. (Enter clichéd bit about unfulfilling academic office work here).

So the winds are blowing, but I don’t know where to go. Stay in Tahoe and continue learning about food with my two cooking jobs? Go to the CIA in Napa? Apply to the French Culinary Institute in New York City to be closer to a dynamic restaurant scene? (And Zabar’s cheese selections...)

While I love my active life in the mountains at Lake Tahoe, perhaps I need some city ambition and pace to kick-start this career choice. Or maybe St. Helena will be the perfect setting to focus wholeheartedly on food and wine. Such a tough decision! Then again, if I’m choosing between a mountain paradise, California wine country, or the city that never sleeps, I’m doing pretty damn good.

Wherever I choose, at least I know I have already picked food. I have always loved cooking, both for myself and for others. Food dazzles me with possibilities. A couple weeks ago, I had plum and cucumber sushi. I know it sounds simple, but I had never tried a plum and cucumber roll. In addition to being visually pleasing with vibrant purple and green stripes poking out through ivory white rice, this roll was one of the best I’d ever tried. I wonder why more sushi restaurants don’t have this crunchy cucumber with smooth plum spread creation. Is it a sushi purist’s nightmare? Am I close to committing the cream cheese sushi sin? I hope not, because if I see it again, I’m ordering it.

My point is not that plum and cucumber sushi is bomb (which is true) but rather that I love food so much I’ll sit down to write a paragraph about it. My point is that food is so universal and so ubiquitous, why wouldn’t I choose a career in this field? We all eat every single day (except for Kelly Ripa, who only eats on Thursdays). I could travel anywhere in the world and be a cook or a food writer investigating local cuisine. How sweet will that be?

In the coming weeks, I should hear from the CIA-Greystone admissions office with a yes or a no. As a friend and former California Culinary Academy admissions officer put it, the CIA is one of the few culinary academies in the U.S. that “actually rejects people.” I find that news encouraging, because I want to go to a good school. I want the best preparation. I want to finish my program feeling prepared for the cooking world. I want to kick some ass.

Stay tuned for what happens next!

Pacific Puffs- San Francisco

2009-09-04T21:39:00.000-07:00

If you haven't gone to Pacific Puffs yet, Cow Hollow's newest corner sweetshop, I forgive you: it's been open less than a month. But if you don't go after reading this, you're missing out big time.

Pacific Puffs, on the corner of Union and Fillmore, serves only cream puffs but they are perfect cream puffs. They have several varities; alas, I've only tried one since I visited on a Sunday evening and they were cleaned out of nearly everything. We were lucky enough to snag the last three Chocolatier Sugar puffs, a choux pastry filled with a dollop of whipped chocolate cream goodness. My girlfriend Erin and I happily bought the last three for a fair $9, and we took our first bites while still in the shop.

The pastry is somewhere between brioche (but less eggy) and croissant (but less flaky) and heaven (but minus the prerequisite good behavior). The chocolate whipped cream is what the Puritans were worried about; it's so lightly chocolate it doesn't feel like a sin. I can't wait to go back and try the classic puff with vanilla cream or the fruit puffs as well. Trent, holler at your girl when you come up with more varieties!

Due to ridiculous zoning restrictions in San Francisco, Pacific Puffs actually bakes their pastries off-site and brings their goodies in the morning every day. This fact works well in their favor, since I would have climbed in the back of the shop with a spoon looking for more whipped chocolate cream- that's how good it is.

The off-site bakery issue only becomes a problem when you have a sweet tooth on Sunday afternoon at 5pm and they can't throw a couple more in the oven for you (my predicament exactly).

I have to say the second best thing about Pacific Puffs (after how crazy yummy good they are) is how light they are. I didn't see a nutritional breakdown on these babies so I can't make any dietary claims, but they don't have the heavy feel of ice cream or cupcakes. A chocolate cupcake with three cubic inches of frosting can leave me feeling like I've torpedo'ed an entire day of sensible eating. Pacific Puffs don't give you that feeling. About the size of your palm, a cream puff is, as the name suggests, a puff. It's airy, it's light. Go to town, girl!

It's the best dessert you can grab, because it satisfies the craving without overwhelming you. I suppose if you want to be overwhelmed, they do come by the dozen.

ESSENTIALS:
Pacific Puffs
2201 Union, corner at Fillmore
(415)-440-7833
www.pacificpuffs.com

NEW RULE

2009-09-04T21:32:00.000-07:00

Write me. Write as I speak, as I think. Write in a way that sounds like Ruth, that my friends and family will recognize, that new readers will appreciate as honest and fresh. Don’t try to be Frank Bruni- that Santé review was an awful attempt. Don’t try to be Julie Powell- who can yell at her husband and eat that much butter but still be charming? Plus, I don’t know anything! I’m not a chef yet. I’m not a food critic yet.

Sometimes, as I try to find a job and a vocation and a place in the world, I still feel like a little girl playing dress-up in her mom’s closet. A woman is meant to wear these clothes, this lipstick, these high heels. Yet, the dress doesn’t fit, the lipstick is all over half my face, and the shoes make me trip.

That’s what it feels like when I try to write like a Food and Wine editor or Wine Spectator travel correspondent (ok, Croatian food is good, but not that good). Perhaps that’s why I write so sporadically; I am writing in a style that I don’t enjoy.

So the new rule stands: Write the Ruthie way, whatever that may be.

May 23rd- Istrian Peninsula, Croatia

2009-06-12T08:50:00.000-07:00

At the moment, I feel like writing about Croatia, where Christie and I spent the last couple days. Why isn’t Croatia more prominent on Americans’ list of places to visit in Europe? From what we saw, Croatia is a beautiful country with interesting (though also complicated) history, incredibly cheap prices, refreshingly cool water, and welcoming, friendly people. It could be a different story in Zagreb, but the Istrian Peninsula, in the northwest corner of the country, is paradise on the Adriatic.

A comfortable three hour ferry ride from Venice, the Istrian peninsula is the smaller, less well-known (perhaps less publicized, thus I hadn’t heard of it...) northern sister of the Dalmatian coast. Given that we only had a few days, we chose Istria, the coast closest to Venice. We stayed in Rovinj (Rovigno) which is the second largest city in Istria, after the Roman ruin city of Pula. During the height of the Venetian republic, Istria and Dalmatia were conquered and ruled under the Doge’s authority, and the Italian language has remained centuries later. Though many people do speak a little English, Italian is really the second language after Croatian.

We booked our stay in Rovinj at the Apartmani Celestina, easily found on hostelworld.com. After a ten minute walk out of the old town center, we found our host Celestina to be as charming and welcoming as her apartments, priced at 45€ a night (about 350 kuna). Apartmani Celestina is located in a residential neighborhood, away from the tourist restaurants that line the marina. Christie and I relished the opportunity to see Rovinj and her residents in their daily routines. We bought groceries at the local corner store, where tough looking Croatian men drank tall bottles of beer at all hours of the day. There was a man with one leg who frequently (and by frequently, I mean every time we walked by in three days, he was there) rode is Honda Four-Wheeler ATV to the shop and could be seen chain-smoking and drinking and chatting with his compatriots. The sheer number of bottle caps on the ground indicated this wasn’t an isolated incident. I couldn’t help but wonder if the one-legged man was involved in the Balkan wars and had lost a leg to a land mine.

While Rovinj isn’t scarred in any visible way from those wars, that’s probably because it is the opposite end of the country from Bosnia. However, a few short conversations revealed that the people of Rovinj certainly have connections with that conflict. We chose to dine at Restaurant Pineta, located in our less-touristy neighborhood. Our server was named Pavle, Bosnian by ethnicity. He said his family came to Rovinj when he was very little “because of the war, you know?” Christie and I thought to ourselves yes, of course, the war. Doesn't everyone move when they’re young because of wars?

Midway through our first dinner there, Pavle loosened up a little and began joking with us. We asked him to recommend a typical Croatian dish; he responded that everything on the menu was Croatian. Further questioning revealed that his favorites included cevapĉici (I think that’s how it’s spelled). He then admitted that cevapĉici are actually a Sarajevo specialty, ten thumb-sized ground beef sausages, served with a sweet red pepper and garlic sauce that only looks like Sriracha.

We started with two salads, one of dandelion and radicchio that turned out too bitter for our palates. However, I’m glad to say we tried a dandelion salad; how often do you see that on even the most inventive menus? The other appetizer was a delicious salad of pickled cucumber, tomato, olives and a fresh, salty cheese- which Christie aptly described as a cross between feta and goat cheese. We followed the salad with the cevapĉici and Istrian sausage, a smaller, sweeter version of bratwurst, with vegetable rice.

Though the sausages were delicious, the highlight of this first dinner was definitely the pickled cucumber and fresh cheese salad. We had never experienced a cheese of this flavor and consistency, and the cucumber was a refreshing foil to the salt of the cheese. Perhaps Pavle noted that we loved the salad, because the second night the dish arrived nearly twice as large.

For our second dinner at Pineta, Pavle directed us to a pasta dish with slow-stewed beef. The pasta wasn’t quite the consistency of gnocchi, but it was slightly chewy. After several mimed demonstrations from our obliging server, we discerned that the pasta is made similar to gnocchi, but with less potato. The little balls are rolled between your fingers until they resemble your pinky.

These skinny, knuckled dumplings must be the Croatian equivalent of macaroni and cheese- essentially, everything you could ask for in a comfort food. The beef broth is salty enough to hit the spot, the noodle dumplings are perfectly chewy; the whole dish is simply satisfying. It seemed like the kind of dish a Croatian mother fixes for her sick son, or her famished husband after an especially hard day of work. Christie and I had spent the day laying on the beach, suntanning and swimming on the Adriatic, so it’s not exactly like we earned it. But that’s what vacation is for- you can eat out of context, just for the taste experience.

Another gastronomic gem we found in our residential neighborhood was a little bakery with sweet and savory pastries and crusty loaves. The bread reminded me of a slightly heartier baguette- not quite as airy as the French original, but then it was better to suited to the peppered Croatian charcuterie and cheese we grabbed for our beach picnic.
The bakery specialized in burek, a heavier pastry that can be described as a cheese- or mince- filled pretzel, as though they had taken flat sheets of phyllo dough, wrapped them around filling and then wound the rope in the shape of a sweet palmier. It was a little too greasy for my taste, because the pastry was already pretty buttery. The cheese left the pastry’s paper wrapping visibly saturated. Obviously, we only ordered burek again at 3 a.m. on our last night there, after four too-many glasses of grappa and honey.

Their sweet pastries, however, were out of this world. A Nutella-filled brioche started my morning off with the perfect sugar shot, while Christie opted for a strudel filled with walnut paste. Croissants dusted with powdered sugar, braided rolls topped with sesame seeds- we tried it all. I think over our three days in Rovinj, we visited the bakery seven times. Luckily for us, it was open twenty four hours, so we could grab a little breakfast at 5:45 a.m., before our ferry back to Venice. Given the aforementioned excess with grappa and honey shots, the pastries were lifesavers, to say the least.

As I write, I am noticing that I frequently describe food items in comparison to something else, something I already know. Perhaps with more writing experience and more culinary knowledge, I’ll be able to describe dishes or particular foods in their own right. Or perhaps the comparisons are useful in that they provide a richer image and mental taste point for my reader.

Riding Bikes

2009-06-12T08:45:00.000-07:00

Thus far I’ve written mostly about food in Croatia, and one might think all we did was eat and drink, but Christie and I did much more than that. We rented bikes for the day for 60 kuna (less than 10€) and rode south.

We left Rovinj around 10 a.m., and rode through RV parks filled with badly sunburned Austrian and German tourists. We rode past nude couples, old couples, babies, and techno-pumping Euro Spring Breakers. (Truly, one little beach resort was roped off for Europe Spring Break 2K9, which looked sparsely attended despite loud house music before noon). We rode through Croatian vineyards, carpeted with red poppy flowers. Unintentionally, we rode through a rock quarry and a cement factory, and left covered in a white dust. We also crisscrossed Croatian farms with ostriches, goats, and horses.

As we rode, we kept saying to each other, “We’re so far off the beaten path, there are no tourists here, this is great!” and “I bet other cyclists don’t have the legs to bike this far!” when in truth we were just lost. We had really made a sharp turn away from the coast and we had been biking away from the beach.

After riding for four and half hours in jean shorts and sandals, the sweat and dust in our eyes forced us to reevaluate our navigation skills. We flagged down a young man on a scooter and he informed us we had actually ridden off the map. We turned around, in desperate search of the closest spot to swim and refresh our overheated faces.

When we finally got back to the coast, we jumped in the water immediately and found the Adriatic to be remarkably salty, so salty that you don’t have to try to float. If you just sit there, or inhale deeply and lay back, you’ll float easily. The water was cold, but not to the point of taking your breath away. We swam and picnicked, and allowed our legs to recover after our long ride.

I hope I make it back to Croatia soon. It would a fantastic place to visit during the World Cup to root with fervid Croatian fans. It would also be a great place to ride a bike down the entire coast for a month or two. We saw many people with saddle bags on their bikes for longer bike tours along the cypress-lined beaches.

When I go again, I might avoid the grappa and honey shots, but I will certainly look forward to another glass of Karlovaćko beer.

On the Streets of Rovinj

2009-06-12T08:44:00.001-07:00

Venice!

2009-06-12T08:13:00.000-07:00

I’ve been in Italy less than a day, and I wonder: Why does food taste so much better in Italy than in the United States? The caffè macchiato this morning was three sips, but three sips better than any cup of translucent coffee water in the U.S. Though the apple croissant was a little heavy on the butter, making it droopy rather than your typical airy croissant, it was certainly a pleasure to eat. Or maybe that was just the fact we were sitting right along the Giudecca canal in Venice, with an offshore breeze cooling our faces- I can’t be certain.

Even an American’s home cooking in Italy produces a tastier product, it seems. Last night, Christie made gnocchi with a homemade meat ragù sauce, salad with tomatoes and Parmiggiano cheese, and a few slices of baguette. It was perfection. I asked if the ingredients came from a specialty store; she named two local grocery stores- Billa and Coop. Imagine the best dinner you’ve had in the U.S. being prepared from ingredients purchased at Food Lion and the Dollar General. The difference in quality at the most pedestrian of shops is remarkable.

Our meal was simple but delightful: the gnocchi felt like pillows between my tongue and teeth. The garlic, onion and red wine in the meat sauce provided the piquant flavor needed to stand up to the heavier gnocchi pasta. And the parmesan- if only you could get such parmesan in the States for the price! A modest wedge of Parmigiano-Reggiano in the U.S. will run around $12, I’d guess, while the same block is 2€ at a Venetian grocery store. And we are shopping on an island.

For lunch, I’ve got a panino Christie prepared. I’ll probably supplement with some fruit from the floating vendors as I wander the narrow calli e canale. Tonight I think we will eat out. Perhaps Restaurant Ivo, an osteria that shares its name with my Bulgarian friend Ivo Ninov. Perhaps we’ll stay on Giudecca, Christie’s island neighborhood, and go to Trattoria Ai Cacciatori where she watches Champions League Soccer matches. I’ll review that meal too, but I’m guessing it will be more of the same: just plain delicious!