If any bottle of fermented grape juice is worth a Benny, then it’s Quilceda Creek’s Columbia Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, at least if you like your Cabs dense, extracted, and larger than life. Think of the very best “cult” wines from the Napa Valley floor, shoot them up with enough steroids to power the Tour de France and Major League Baseball combined, and then somehow balance all that bulging, bronzed muscle with enough subtlety and grace to keep everything harmonious – imagine The Incredible Hulk dancing a perfect Swan Lake, or The Situation passing abstract algebra – and you’ll have some idea of what this freak-of-nature wine is all about. I’ve heard the superficially outlandish claim that Quilceda produces “value” wines – normally I bristle when people talk about $100 wines as anything but unadulterated luxuries – but score junkies will make the case: The past 6 vintages have earned 598 out of a possible 600 points, including four perfect 100s and two 99s, which probably makes for the cheapest “Parker Perfect” around, and frankly shames the ubiquitous triple-digit price tags that Napa still spawns like bacteria in a warm petri dish.
But this post isn’t really about the flagship Columbia Valley offering, it’s about Quilceda’s “Columbia Valley Red Wine”, a blend of declassified lots from its bigger and badder brethren that sells for a small fraction of the price. Unfortunately, it’s also about how even the world’s great winemakers, like Gold Glove shortstops, can post an error on a routine play. At $35 for the current release, the Red still counts as special-occasion material in our house, but considering how good the ’06s – broadly considered an inferior vintage to the 07s – turned out, and the opportunity to get a sense of what the 100-pointer must be like, I figured I had to stock up.
The catch, as with most mailing-list wine offerings, is that you neither get to taste nor read reviews before you commit to the purchase, and which is why I’m posting this, my first Official Bitch About People I Like: The bottle I opened last night was a decidedly mediocre wine, not at all balanced, and profoundly lacking in true varietal character. The professionals reviewers will tell you a very different story, 93 points across the board and oozing with accolades, but I’m here to tell you otherwise: This wine is hopelessly overcooked. The main turn-off is an unmistakable nose of over-stewed, almost raisiny, fruit, but the wine fails in the mouth as well, because all that rich fruit seems steeped in alcohol and creates an aggressive perception of heat. I would have guessed Zinfandel in a blind tasting, and not a great one.
To be fair, I have tasted at least a dozen Quilceda Cabs over the past 10 or 15 years, and I have absolutely loved each and every one of them, until last night; as they say, stuff happens. Maybe it was bottle variation – I really hope so, although I fear the likelihood is low for so young a wine from such a technically proficient winery – but until I try another one, I have to hold up my hand for a big finger-wag at the Wine Advocate and Wine Enthusiast for what appear to be blatantly partial reviews, and for the incredibly talented team at Quilceda Creek for releasing this wine under their otherwise unimpeachable label: I love all y’all, but the ’07 Red just isn’t all that.
Mobile Munchday in SR?
Lots of chatter about the possibility of a regular food truck gathering in Santa Rosa starting in January. A handful of mobile vendors, led by Jillian Dorman of Street-Eatz have convened and are working with the city to find a central downtown location. Munch Monday on the way? We say okay!
Meanwhile, several SoCo trucks will be headed over to Napa on Dec. 3 for a Wine Country event with their eastern compatriots. Stay tuned for details.
So what IS pistou, anyway?
Let me start with the essential fact: Pistou is seriously good stuff. Made in minutes, from very few (and entirely raw) ingredients, it turns a vegetable soup transcendent, transforms pasta from simple to sublime, and, perhaps less conventionally but no less successfully, it works wonders with certain seafood.
The problem is, unlike in the case of its far more famous (and near-mystical-when-done-properly) cousin, pesto, there seems to be no clear agreement on what actually constitutes a true pistou. Or, at least that is what is to be gleaned from a quick perusal of my personal collection of cook books. In the case of pesto, one need go no further than Marcella Hazan (Essentials of Italian Cooking). OK, sure, the exact proportions may be a bit different in your favorite version, but how exact is a “cup of loosely packed basil”, or “2-4 plump garlic cloves”? My point is, there is broad agreement amongst serious cooks (or at least the subset of those whose cookbooks I both possess and have bothered to read) as to what constitutes pesto, but the same cannot be said for pistou. To wit:
- Julia Child, in her classic Mastering the Art of French Cooking, suggests a relatively small proportion of basil, a relatively large proportion of tomato, and the more-or-less-usual quantities of olive oil and garlic. And – this being, in my opinion, the critical point – Julia includes grated cheese (Italian cheese, in point of fact – fascinating to the point of uniqueness, in classical French cooking). But, look: No butter. So this isn’t quite pesto, after all.
- In Mireille Johnston‘s really good, if overlooked, small tome on Provencal cooking, The Cuisine of the Sun, we find basil, garlic, olive oil, and, again, grated Parmigiano – but here the proportions are distinctly pesto-like, with something like 5-10 times the amount of basil Ms Child would have me use (and a bit more garlic than most Italians would use).
- Patricia Wells, in her consistently excellent At Home in Provence, provides a very similar recipe to Ms Johnston, with pesto-like proportions, but – critically – no cheese.
- Finding such inconsistencies, and lacking the motivation, resources, and language schools to track down primary historical sources, I went to Gastronomique, which provides (perhaps unsurprisingly, given their shared French provenance) very similar guidelines to Ms Child. However, and importantly I think, Larousse emphasizes that the base condiment is a simple paste of garlic, basil, and olive oil, but that tomatoes and cheese may sometimes be added.
One may fairly ask, “So what?” Because, while I’m not quiet a zealot about it, I generally count myself amongst the Italian school of “no dairy with seafood”, and wild salmon was on our menu recently (a terrific not-so-classic combination, this garlicky concoction with wild salmon – for example, like this or this). So where I come out is this: If you’re going to serve pistou with seafood – and it can be truly exceptional with sea bass, crab, salmon, langoustine, and perhaps most of all, rouget or red mullet – then follow Ms Wells, use lots of basil, and leave out the cheese. As to the radical variation in proportions, I think it really comes down to taste and application: The Childs/Gastronomique versions are really closer to a flavored olive oil, almost a vinaigrette without the acid, whereas the Wells/Johnston versions show case the aromatics of the basil and form a thicker, paste-like consistency, both of which are features I adore (even more so if you’re spreading it on crusty bread, and why wouldn’t you). One thing that is always and everywhere uncertain is the garlic: Which varietal, how young or old, the size of the cloves, and whether you want a mere background hint, or a spicy wallop in the front of the palate… it just depends, is about all I can say.
In the event, my eldest daughter and I decided to stop by the Tuesday farmer’s market in town and, as we were under a bit of time pressure, made only one stop for produce: Luckily, we landed at the Bernier Farms stand, and they had an exceptionally fragrant, easy-peeling, and not-too-hot Tuscan garlic called Rocambole, as well as emerald green bunches of Genovese basil, so the decision was easy. I would use my bulk olive oil from Costco without apology, but it would be even better with one of the local versions from up in Dry Creek.
Pistou (food processor method)
- Mince 1-2 large (2-4 small) cloves of fresh garlic and form a paste by sprinkling with kosher salt and using the flat side of large knife to mash the salt and garlic on a cutting board.
- Gently wash and de-stem 2 cups of loosely packed basil leaves, taking care not to beat the leaves up too much at this stage. Get the Genovese varietal if at all possible, nothing else has the fragrance. (On a side note, if you have sun, basil is a frightfully productive and easy-to-grow plant.)
- Put the garlic paste and basil into a food processor and puree, while slowly adding a quarter to a half cup of good quality, extra virgin olive oil. And if you want to be strict about the whole cooking-local thing live in California, you can probably get a very good olive oil from not too far away. (I love our local oils, and I buy but I’m no zealot, and have no objection to buying organic extra virgin Italian olive oil in bulk from the dreaded Costco.) Continue with the oil until it reaches the desired consistency.
- Puree just until smooth or you’ll bruise the leaves beyond recognition, a few minutes should suffice. Transfer quickly to a tightly-sealing container that fits the quantity as well as possible – oxidation takes away the wonderful color of the pistou, so the less exposed surface area the better. Keep refrigerated, but allow to come to room temperature before serving.
Paolo’s Ravioli Deli closing
Well-known Fourth Street deli, Paolo’s, will shutter in December. The family will maintain their second cafe inside the Redwood Credit Union. Here’s a note from the family….
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“I’m writing to you all today in order to inform you of some sad but hopeful news. On December 1st 2010, Paolo’s Ravioli Deli and Café on 1422 4th Street will close their doors for good. Paul and Cookie Schaffer opened their Café on May 1st 1983 and have endured all the ups and downs that the restaurant business provided. With Age and poor economic times this difficult family decision was made.
In May of 1983, Paul and Cookie began a dream of owning their own business in beautiful Santa Rosa. They honestly never thought they’d still be in business 27 years later; let alone have two locations. All they really wanted was to provide for their three kids while enjoying the benefits that Sonoma County had to offer. The idea that Paolo’s Ravioli Deli and Café would become such a staple has been a wonderful surprise. The food, the personalities, but most important you people have kept Paolo’s Ravioli Deli alive and such a success all these years.
But, all is not over! These years allowed Paul and Cookie to open a second Café located within the Redwood Credit Unions Corporate Facility on 3033 Cleveland Ave. They will be joining me in an effort to bring the Cleveland Deli to the success 4th street has been.
Paul, Cookie, Denise, Courtney and I really want to thank every person who has become a part of our family throughout these 27 beautiful years. We hope that even though 4th street will be closed, you’ll find your way over to the Deli on Cleveland to see us. We promise, the food, the personalities and the love will remain very much open, that’s the real reason why Paolo’s Ravioli Deli has been a success all these years and will continue to!
Cheers,
Paulie Schaffer
Clark Wolf: The Food Show Promo
Oh, this is gonna be good. Clark Wolf’s new show, The Food Show, debuts on TV 50 Nov. 19. Set your Tivo.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrzyfHkDuFs[/youtube]
Mama Tina’s Ravioli
Tina Eliason knew better than to open her own food business — any business for that matter. The former banker spent nearly a decade underwriting and risk analyzing small business loans. “After that, I swore I’d never make the mistake of going into business for myself.” Three years later, she’s making (and selling) more than 12,000 raviolis a month as the mama behind Mama Tina’s Ravioli. Very much in business for herself. And growing fast.
It started accidentally, as most good businesses do. Laid-off banker turned barkeep, the longtime Forestville resident whipped up a batch of her tried-and-true Spallina-family ravioli one night at the Rio Nido Roadhouse. “I made 20 servings and they sold out in an hour and a half,” she said. Friends and customers kept asking for more of her family’s ravioli, and despite her initial resistance to calling her pasta-making a business, Mama Tina’s was born.
Several afternoons a week Tina heads over to the commercial-grade cafeteria kitchen of a nearby school where she whips up a a few hundred ravioli, packages and freezes them for her supermarket and farm market clients. But at $8 dozen what’s keeping fans coming back is Tina’s constant experimentation with ingredients: Philly cheese steak (it’s everything but the bread), Thanksgiving (turkey, stuffing), pumpkin pie dessert ravioli as well as more traditional ravioli with local mushrooms; Dungeness crab, lobster, butternut squash and traditional Sicilian sausage and spinach. She’s currently working on another with chocolate and raspberry.
Everything’s made by hand, using local ingredients, and Tina’s a stickler for details. Having been the family pasta-maker since she was a kid, she’s had plenty of training. “I grew up in a big Italian family and the person who started dinner didn’t have to clean up,” she said. Each ravioli is rolled, filled and cut by hand, a process that takes her several hours. “Raviolis are a very labor-intensive,” she said. Eliason shops the local farmer’s markets for produce and meats, mixing up each batch herself and making hearty sauces to compliment the ravioli.
You can find Mama Tina’s Ravioli at Speers Market in Forestville, where Tina does tastings each Friday afternoon; the Windsor Farmer’s Market on Sundays, on the menu at Bear Republic in Healdsburg and she’ll soon be on the menu at Lisa Hemenway’s Fresh in the cafe. You can find her at : mamatinas.us or on her Facebook page
Finishing off a batch of ravioli on a rainy afternoon, she says, “I’ve never had more fun in my life.”
(Props to Chowhounder Melanie Wong for finding Mama Tina)
Trattoria Due Amici | Cotati
Meaning “two friends”, this simple Italian eatery is a surprisingly tasty find in Cotati. Run by, you guessed it, two friends (Gary Tarantino and Hector Quiroga who worked together in the restaurant biz in SF), the menu isn’t overly fussy, but focuses on the classics. Best bets include their “00” flour pizzas with San Marzano tomatoes, house made rosemary foccacia and linguine with pesto cream. Check out Italian salumi antipasti and homemade tiramisu as well.
8492 Gravenstein Hwy., Cotati, 792-2665.
The Costco Report
The Costco Report: A recurring, if episodic, column devoted to ferreting out the more promising offerings, as well as to warding off the worst of the hazards.
This Week’s Pick: Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil (about $21 for two 2-liter bottles)
Alas, our fair county’s Autumn weather – more than a few scattered showers and increasingly chilly evenings – hasn’t been conducive to margaritas, so I’m still sitting on a healthy stockpile of the agave nectar I secured during my previous tactical assault on the Big C. On the other hand, as despondent as I may be over the faltering flow of tequila into my limeade, I do love the change of seasons and the cooking that comes with it, so that’s what I tried to keep in mind as I struggled to maneuver my Titanic shopping cart across an arctic sea of dubious pre-fab meals and food-sample ice floes. Autumn cooking, at least in my kitchen, means several things – lots of slow braises, smoke detector-hot pizza stones, and richly sauced pastas – but above all it means soups. And soups, at least in my kitchen, always get a garnish.
One of the very easiest ways to add a splash of color and spice to everything from salad to soup is with a flavored oil. Flavored oils – typically a handful of something colorful and tasty and a pinch of salt, blended with oil and then strained – are trivially easy to make, store well, and make your plates look cool. Granted, you run some risk that either Bobby Flay cites you for copyright infringement or the 80s ask for their plates back, but as a rule, flavored oils are a pretty good crutch for the home cook. And they’re almost impossible to screw up.
Flavored Oil
The possibilities really are limitless, but I generally try to use flavors that go with a wide variety of dishes, that have good color, and that I’ve already got to hand, including staple herbs, such as parsley, basil, and chives, and almost any brightly colored and sharply flavored chili peppers. Simply start with a quarter cup or so of good quality olive oil; add a handful of whichever flavoring ingredient you’re keen on; and blend or run through a food processor until smooth. I will usually, but by no means always, pass the oil through a fine-mesh strainer in order to remove the big particulates.
In terms of the base oil itself, and the subject of this Report, the olive oil in question – labeled “Organic Extra Virgin” under the “Kirkland Signature” house brand – is seriously good stuff. It’s not just cheaper (by a wide margin) than the similar product at Safeway, TJ’s, or – heaven forbid – Whole Paycheck, it’s considerably better: Bright, grassy, slightly peppery, with a nice, round mouth feel, pretty much everything you’d want in an every-day olive oil. If you really want to think about the oil you buy, check out the good review here, as well as the UC Davis study, in which the vast majority of imported olive oils fail to pass accepted quality standards (oils produced in California fared considerably better – chalk one more up for local food sourcing).
Dude Food: Cookbooks for Guys
Want to encourage your man to take spend a little more time in the kitchen? Here are some top picks to get his spatula fired up. Now that’s hot.
Recipes Every Man Should Know
Susan Russo and Brett Cohen (Quirk Books, $9.95)
This little black book should find its way into every man’s holiday stocking. Or perhaps left under a pillow, on the tool bench or atop the toilet (hey, he spends a lot of time in there). The fact is: Cooking is sexy, and men who can do it with confidence are even sexier. This pocket-sized guide to good eats is studly enough to stash away in the kitchen drawer while whipping up poker-night buffalo wings, lady-killing strawberries zabaglione, dinner-at-my-house shrimp fettucine and parent-impressing bacon-wrapped meatloaf. Plus, a handy guide to man-tastic turkey carving. It’s the best cookbook your guy will ever completely disavow that he ever needed in the first place (but secretly love).
Cooking for Geeks
Jeff Potter (O’Reilly, $34.99)
Real men cook with goggles and liquid nitrogen! Making cheffy molecular gastronomists look rather twee, O’Reilly’s Cooking for Geeks is a densely packed collection of hard-core food science, cooking nerdery, inspiring interviews and clever recipes for the industrial-tool and beaker-set. Marrying cookery, chemistry, biology and physics, author Jeff Potter takes readers on fantastic edible explorations both of his own inspiration and luminaries including chemist Herve This, web luminary Xeni Jardin and Twitter recipe-writer Maureen Evans. Consider this the culinary love child of Harold McGee and Adam Savage where you can calculate gluten percentages of different flours before making a pie dough or the physiology of tasting before whipping up a batch of Michael Chu’s (Cooking for Engineers) Bar-Charted Tiramisu. Then suit up and play with nitrous oxide creamers and the denaturing of animal collagen. Brilliant! Now, you’ll excuse us while we perfect our bacon-infused bourbon with 30-second chocolate cake.
Mosh Potatoes: Recipes, Anecdotes, and Mayhem from the Heavyweights of Heavy Metal
Steve Seabury (Simon and Schuster, $15)
Finally, a cookbook worthy of the metal militia. In this kick-ass compendium of horn-throwing eats, the baddest boys (and girls) of heavy metal dish up their up their favorite recipes. Stop laughing. Because glass shards, bat’s blood and Cheetos get old after a while. Metal head Steve “Buckshot” Seabury has collected recipes from silly (Weeping Brown Eye Chili, Hangover Pie, Trailerpark Shepherd’s pie) to serious (seared tuna with wasabi-butter sauce, Linguine and Clams Castellamare), along with uncensored anecdotes from the metal gods of Dokken, Coheed and Cambria, Queensryche, Lamb of God, Guns N Roses, Alice Cooper and dozens of others you’ll no doubt recognize from hours in front of That Metal Show and Dinner with the Band. There’s no shortage of head-bangin’ dude food here, pasta, chili, burritos, pizza and lots of meat –though we can’t help but be intrigued by the mini cheesecake tarts by the figure-conscious Ronny Munroe of Metal Church. Rockin.
Secrets of the Sommeliers: How to Think and Drink Like the World’s Top Wine Professionals
Rjat Parr and Jordan Mackay (Ten Speed Press, $32.50)
No one likes a wine snob. Likewise, no one likes a jack wagon who doesn’t know his Pinot from Cabernet Sauvignon. Consider this gentleman’s guide to the wine world — a sort of best friend in the business who’ll walk you through the basics of everything from tasting to buying without treating you like an idiot. More than just a primer, Secrets is filled with insider insights, especially when it comes to Parr’s near-encyclopedic knowledge of French wines. Less endearing is Parr’s sniffy disdain for most Californian wines, though a prevalent attitude with many sommeliers who fault them with being over-extracted and over-alcoholic. What stings is that Napa and Sonoma collectively get short shrift, with only cursory (and rather snippy) inclusions, mostly categorized as over-rated. Then again, soms are known for their strong opinions — even when they’re wrong. Armed with your newfound understanding of body, structure, tannins and nose, however, you’ll be able to decide for yourself what tastes good.
Eat Your Black and Orange
As usual, my keyboard is running several days back of my knife and fork, but at least you know where my priorities lie: Worry first about the cooking and the eating. Having spent two months watching the Giants’ thrillingly improbable championship run like a little boy in the bleachers – all black and orange dervish, mitt held high for the fly ball that might – I can now say that Bruce Bochy would back me on this: Pitch and make plays first, worry about talking after you win the game. So, a week and change after the fact, here’s what I served when the Giants brought home the Commissioner’s Trophy on Halloween, a plate of black and orange food that didn’t require an above-ground nuclear weapon test in order to occur in nature, and still tasted good.
The challenge, for me, lay in the colors themselves, because neither black nor orange (excepting the mysterious lifeforms evolving in my wife’s Tupperware laboratory at the back of the fridge) appear with much frequency in my kitchen, and Halloween colors, as cute as they may be for decorative baking and jelly beans, just didn’t strike me as being obviously affiliated with the list of things I want to put in my mouth. Luckily, I live with several strange and wonderful kids who simply love fish eggs – they really go for the briny pop of day-glo-orange, sushi-bar ikura – and so off I went, with caviar in mind (that it would provide a good dance partner for champagne didn’t exactly detract). Still, while I’ve got nothing against snarfing down a plate of black and orange fish eggs, the strictly-caviar approach seemed somehow too easy, too dependent on expensive ingredients, and ultimately lacking real food-think. Moreover, while I don’t mind ikura as a garnish – I often use them with smoked salmon, as I did for my wife’s most recent Hot Mamas Night – I’m not a big fan of the stuff by the mouthful; maybe my palate has been too Westernized for too long, or maybe I just spent too many summers learning how to thread identical-looking little red balls of nastiness onto fish hooks with my grandfather, leaving me with Coast Guard orange-stained fingertips and the unmistakable smell of warm bait…
Anyway, to cut to the chase, I bought some inexpensive lumpfish caviar (definitively not my favorite – too crunchy, no richness to balance its saline tang, but at less than $10 for a 1oz jar, inky black in color, and easy to secure at the local market…), and started thinking about orange foods other than salmon roe. Carrots seemed an obvious choice in isolation but less convincing in combination, so I did a little digging and unearthed Heston Blumenthal’s description of how he came to serve scallops with caviar and white chocolate at the Fat Duck, which then led me to the food pairing website that he inspired. Happily, I discovered that white chocolate – technically, not ‘chocolate’ at all, which is partly why it works – not only does great things for certain seafoods (lobster, scallops, cod, bottarga…), but also mates enthusiastically with the flavor of raw carrots. As Mr Blumenthal points out, molecular bases for food pairings are not wholly to be trusted, but the idea of carrots and white chocolate, with its echo of Thanksgiving yams baked under a blanket of toasted marshmallow, seemed solid enough to run with, and became the unifying thread for the dish.
Caviar with White Chocolate and Carrot Puree (4-8 servings)
- Ingredients: 1oz jar of black or nearly-black caviar, a small block of white chocolate (check the ingredients – it should be made from real cocoa butter and flavored with real vanilla), and a small bunch of really fresh, really sweet carrots. [Note: You could turn this upside down by using ikura for the caviar, and white carrots for the puree.] Keep the chocolate and caviar in the fridge.
- Roughly chop the carrots and gently simmer until soft in chicken stock, 10-15 minutes (you could use water, it just taste better with stock). Reserve the stock and briefly shock the carrots.
- Puree the carrots in a food processor, adding stock as needed to achieve the desired consistency. Season with salt, white pepper and, when finished, blend in a small knob of room-temperature butter.
- Use a truffle-shaver or microplane to shave the chocolate into thin flakes.
- Plate by coating the bottom of a shallow bowl with the puree, carefully spoon a portion of caviar into the middle. Garnish the puree with the chocolate shavings.
- Serve with a rich champagne and toast the World Series Champion SF Giants!