A new Korean restaurant, Tov Tofu, is set to open near the Yulupa Whole Foods in Santa Rosa in the coming weeks.
Yay!
Sonoma County’s long been short on Korean restaurants (though there are a number of Asian-or-otherwise eateries owned by Korean folks), this much-on-the-radar cuisine.
The space was previously occupied by Thai eatery, Bangkok Villa, which closed in late July. Bangkok Villa owners sold the Bennett Valley restaurant space, BiteClub hears, after a whirlwind success at their second eatery, Tomi Thai, which opened in Windsor last year.
Tov Tofu, 1169 Yulupa, Santa Rosa
Cooking For Kids with Just Three Ingredients
About a month ago, lacking my hoped-for, fleeting, and frustratingly oft-absent daily quotient of inspiration and incisiveness, I decided to try something new and, I admit, sort of gimmicky: I decided to find out out how many distinct, complete dishes I could compose using just three ingredients. (To be precise, “how many” pending boredom, constructive dismissal, failure to get out of bed, or any other inherent vice of the would-be blogger.)
In some respects, cooking with a severely restricted number of ingredients is endemic to my whole approach: If I buy less but better stuff and take care in its preparation, I’ll increase the odds of the final product not sucking. Further, much as I imagine the process of getting dressed to be for a really hot chick (or dude, depending which team and side of the plate you bat on), these two basic prerogatives reinforce one another: The better the raw material, the less it needs dressing-up, and the skimpier the dressing, the more pronounced its inner hotness. And, importantly for our household, nowhere does the fewer-ingredients/simpler-technique approach bear sweeter fruit than in response to my frustration of cooking for kids. Don’t get me wrong: I love, love, to cook for, and particularly with, my children; I find great joy in bringing them into the kitchen and watching them learn to think about and prepare the food they will eat; and I believe strongly that it is my responsibility as a parent to help my littles learn what real food tastes like, what tastes good to them, and why. But when the homework still isn’t done, the bath is getting cold, and our evening routine careens off the rails like some life-imitating-art version of Wiley Coyote piloting a locomotive into a swan dive off the rim of the Grand Canyon, I will readily confess that I find preparing several different versions of several different dishes in order to accommodate this week’s litany of idiosyncratic likes and dislikes, exceedingly trying.
So, why not codify the project and cook using just three ingredients? I recently asked myself this question while staring down the barrel of yet another Monday night meal (Mondays are consistently hard for me; maybe it’s the hangover from cooking fun stuff straight from the market all weekend; or perhaps the kids are grumpy with the first homework assignments of the week; there are lunches to be made; the TV is crap; all in all, the whole family has bounced around like loose electrons since we all got let out on Friday, and Monday’s demand that we all return to our valences amidst a broader rekindling of the household order). A quick inventory of the cupboards yielded nothing revolutionary: the ubiquitous pasta-with-butter; some leftover mac-n-cheese; a breakfast burrito; a bag of polenta; and of course my standing order to Choose something I already mentioned, go get yourself a bowl of cold cereal, or don’t eat. Because I’m done. To the munchkins’ credit, the polenta took it by several lengths, leaving me with the sort of problem I like best: How do I transform a simple ingredient into a main-course dish with a minimum of fuss?
Another quick scouring of lower and forgotten drawers, a few experimental unveilings of mysterious shapes shrouded in plastic wrap or foil, and a quick mental palate gut-check yielded a few translucent slices of still-good if slightly dry Serrano ham and a hunk of really stinky (“stinky” in a good way, as in that uniquely French capacity to make “gym-locker aroma” complimentary), washed-rind Raclette. The result was a very tasty little plate consisting of just three ingredients:
Creamy Polenta with Raclette & Serrano Crisps
- Prepare a basic polenta, as described on the package or here. (I’ve heard that you can make acceptable polenta with a “no-stir” method, and Marcella Hazan agrees, but I’ve not tried it; I do know that if you do it the right way, it takes a small amount of simple work, and the result is consistently outstanding.)
- While the polenta is cooking, separate several slices of the ham (Serrano is particularly good, but you could use a Prosciutto or any number of thinly sliced charcuterie and get much the same effect), tear it into pieces, and saute them over low to medium-low heat, either in a nonstick skillet or a lightly oiled fry pan. Flip and toss the meat from time to time, breaking it up with the edge of a spatula, until it is lightly crispy (it will scorch easily, so be careful). Drain and reserve on a paper towel.
- Grate the Raclette (again, it needn’t be Raclette, but try to use something with a pungent flavor and good melting qualities; anything in the “fondue” family would be ideal) across a microplane or the smaller side of a box grater.
- As soon as it’s finished cooking, mound the polenta in the middle of a pasta bowl, cover with a handful of the cheese while the cereal is still piping hot, and top with the ham chips.
A Fondolicious Slice
If you live in Sonoma County, either you rode your bike with Levi Leipheimer in the Gran Fondo this past Saturday, and it’s still all you want to talk about; or you didn’t, and you’re ready to cave in the skull of the next person who regales you with his or her war stories from the event. I count myself amongst the former, but empathize with the latter, so I’m just not going there, at least not in this forum (close friends and family, however, remain at risk, what with the post-ride buzz still in effect and inevitable further encouragement of the official results and pictures not yet posted) .
That being said, I’d like to take a brief moment out of my morning and yours to send a big PK shout-out to one particular local purveyor of food, Gran Fondo supporter, and all-around kick-ass pizza maker, Kashaya of Kashaya’s Brick Oven Pizza. There were lots of local eateries offering up sustenance to the calorie-deprived cyclist (check out the full list at BiteClub), but I only had one meal ticket, and suffice it to say, I wouldn’t have it any other way: Kashaya makes a chewy, perfectly-charred-but-not-burnt crust and tops it with a well-conceived combination of locally-grown goodies. I’m a pizza snob of the very highest order, and while we may not be talking about DiFara, Brooklyn is a very long drive, and Kashaya (along with Rosso and perhaps a few others) is an oasis in the largely barren pizza wasteland of my adopted home county.
So, knowing next to nothing about either Kashaya or her food (in point of fact, I still know next to nothing, although some useful reviews may be found here), I learned all I needed to from my first bite and this little anecdote: When I got to the order-window, they tragically had run out of dough, and Kashaya was nowhere in sight. Why? Because she had gone home, in the middle of the event, to knead more dough, by hand and to order, all to help me re-load my carbs. Now that is my kind of cook.
Luma | Petaluma
Luma was destined to be a neighborhood restaurant even before there was a neighborhood.
Newly minted restaurateur Tim Tatum (who developed several multi-story loft houses along G Street in Petaluma’s warehouse district) always envisioned this cozy corner as a gathering spot for the 150-plus new residences along this once-stark industrial stretch along the Petaluma River . (Three Twins Ice Cream and Cowgirl Creamery have warehouses across the street and the wildly popular Aqus Cafe and Sonoma Portworks are just a block away).
“We want it to have that moth-to-flame feel at night,” says Tatum, pointing to the neon sign LUMA sign that flickers on at dusk. With warm interior lights, clink of glasses and drifting scent of pizza spilling onto the sidewalks, its starting to feel that way, he says.
Over the last several months, Tatum has been building out the space and gathering up local talent to make this more than a watering hole, but a solid eatery as approachable to loft-dwellers and those in nearby established neighborhoods bordering the burgeoning warehouse district.
Open for lunch and dinner, Luma’s menu is a shifting landscape of small plates, afternoon sandwiches, pizzas and heartier Wine Country-Italian fare for dinner. Nothing’s overly precious, though there are drizzles and shavings here and there that remind you that you’re in Sonoma County. And though the wood-oven is a centerpiece of the kitchen, Tatum’s careful not to call Luma a pizzeria. Exec chef Jen Solomon (District, AsiaSF) masterminds the menu while Elizabeth Takuchi-Krist serves (Rubicon, Wine Spectrum) is bar and wine consultant, which means a cleverly-thought out wine list featuring some very unusual suspects (Slovenian furmint?) at weeknight-out prices.
The kitchen’s still perfecting flavors and techniques while the menu settles in, but early best bets include: Oven roasted pear, mache and blue cheese crostone with Marshall’s Farm honey drizzle ($9.50), Satan’s Kiss pizza, $15 (roasted cherry peppers, suasage, mozzarella, ricotta, leeks and bit of sweet heat); Korean bbq chicken banh mi with pickled daikon, carrots, cilantro, jalapeno and sriracha mayo wrapped up with a side of slaw ($11). Sandwiches disappear in the evening, replaced by larger-plate dishes including ancho-rubbed skirt steak with chimichurri, filo-wrapped salmon and a pasta or risotto of the night. Don’t miss: For dessert the chocolate pot de creme is an outrageously tasty splurge.
Luma, 500 First Street, Petaluma, 658.1940. Monday – Saturday: 11:30 a.m. – 9:00 p.m. Closed on Sunday. lumapetaluma.com
Meat, Braise, Love
Producing a braise in your own kitchen is a bit like making porn in your own bed: It rewards practice, because when you get it just right, it’s the best you’ll ever see, and all the times you don’t, it’s still a very long way from sucking. Similarly, there is just so much to love about the braise: Purely from a gastronomic perspective, no other cooking technique so easily employed by the home cook comes close to creating the depth and concentration of flavor than does the properly executed braise. It rewards economy: The intelligent use of cheaper cuts, transformed as if by magic; the stuff otherwise too tough to chew transmogrified into fork-tender nuggets of gustatory gold by the application of little more than water, heat, and patience. It produces exceptional sauces and gravies almost as afterthoughts. The braise accommodates proteins, starches, and vegetables all in one pot, which can then be served family style in the cooking vessel itself, or re-plated and dressed up in style, depending. And, provided one follows some basic principles, an effective braise provides the cook with an exceptional amount of interpretive girth, requires no careful measurements, no indentured servitude to recipes and cookbooks, all of which amounts to solid structural engineering for the way I like to cook.
As to the title of this thread, just for the record, I’ve neither read the book, seen the movie, nor, for that matter, given any serious consideration to doing either, as I’m reasonably certain that I’d be repulsed but, like the ubiquitous fender-bender on the 101, find it impossible to look away; I strongly suspect that the experience would be very much like being force-fed Indian desserts while attending one of those made-for-TV mega-church Sunday sermons: Cloyingly sweet and offensively preachy all at the same time, a sort of psychological gavage. (Maybe that’s grossly unfair but, as with meals, I can only consume so many books, and I aim to make them all count.) Truth be told, I’m just trying to cross-stitch the title onto the longer thread, because braising, unlike snippy reviews of books I’ve not read or Julia Roberts’ teeth, will be a recurring theme in my kitchen and on this site, because a good braise is the sort of food that you smell all day long, that makes you want to open your best bottle of red wine and eat in your PJs at the same time, that can make a girl’s toes curl. For better or worse, and likely both, my wife doesn’t really eat land animals, so my best shot at getting a toe-curling endorsement, inasmuch as cooking is concerned, is probably mac-n-cheese (the subject of another ongoing thread), but today I’ve got braising on the brain and, more specifically, the braising of big hunks of prehistoric-looking meat, wrapped in butcher’s paper, studded with large bones, and replete with the potential to disturb small children.
So what is braising? Larousse describes a braise as “a moist cooking method using a little liquid that barely simmers…” and goes on to point out that the classical technique involves first browning the meat in a little hot fat and then arranging it on a bed of cooked vegetables, partially covered in cooking liquid, and allowed to simmer slowly in a tightly covered pan so as not to lose moisture its (and, therefore, flavor and texture) due to excessive evaporation. That pretty much sums it up, although there are some other basic guidelines – use a cut with some connective tissue in order to create body in the sauce; be sure to have some acid in the liquid to break it all down and balance out the richness; generally, add some aromatics to the broth; finish the sauce at the end, while the meat rests; and always, try to have a general sense of how all the flavors will ultimately work together, and in proportions suited to the pot – which, when followed – invariably improve the final result. I recently noticed that McGee, in his essential On Food and Cooking, further advises that the meat be kept in relatively large pieces; that the initial browning kills microbes in addition to creating flavor; and – in a departure from almost every other cookbook I’ve read – recommends starting the pot in a cold oven and restricting the final cooking temperature to around 200F, which is considerably cooler than most recipes you’ll find. I have, in the past, used a pre-heated oven at a temperature of anywhere from 250-375F, depending on the particulars of the cut the dish is based upon. However, I make a general rule of listening to McGee -the guy is a scientist and does not mess around – so I’m going to do another one soon using his particular technique.
I’m not going to provide recipes in this post – I’ve got lots of favorites, some mine, some not, and I’ll put a bunch of them up over time – because I’m already over my daily word-count, and all I really hoped for was to inspire anyone who hasn’t braised to do so forthwith, and as to everybody else, to do it better, and more often.
(Click anywhere on the Foodista widget below for a step-by-step of the basic technique)
The Caffeine Addict: Hooked, Locally
Although I recently admitted to my failings as a true coffee connoisseur, my palate remains resolute in its hatred of oxidation. Or, having puzzled over the chemical processes involved, I should say that I hate the change in flavors and aromas caused by reduction-oxidation, but that takes too long, and efficiency matters in the kitchen. Furthermore, while my math skills may be passable and I find physics fascinating, chemistry has, at least since the 7th grade, given me a headache: Something about all that rote memorization and what I always took to be an unhealthy and mind-numbing emphasis on the “what” at the expense of the “how”.
In any case, suffice it to say that the taste and smell of a food (for the avoidance of doubt, coffee is closer to the bottom than the top of the Food Pyramid, at least in my kitchen) changes by virtue of the food’s contact with the air we breathe, and most of these changes are not for the better. Oxidation creates that nasty metallic taste, the perception of acridness and overcooked-ness. This process is particularly acute in two of my favorite beverages, wine and coffee; fortunately, water, by my accounting the only other liquid truly essential to the sustenance of life, seems a bit more stable when left to its own devices.
In the case of coffee, the important thing to know is that the process of oxidation begins immediately, and the engine for this process is heat, although it is also deleteriously influenced by the piercing of the shell of the bean (the excellent if slightly more technical discussion I base this on may be found here): As soon as the bean is roasted, its taste and smell begins to degrade, in ways both subtle and profound: The compounds responsible for “good” flavors fade away, and the concentration of those responsible for “bad” flavors increases. The good news is that Mother Nature is also a coffee lover and, as is her wont, designed the bean in a particularly clever way: First, the external structure of the bean itself traps and protects many of the desirable features of coffee’s flavor profile inside; second, even after grinding, some of the aromatics remain inside the coffee by virtue of the bean’s naturally occurring oils and waxes known as lipids.
So what’s a deeply entrenched caffeine addict to do?
- Buy your beans in smaller amounts, as frequently as practical, and as close as possible to the date on which the beans were actually roasted. Clearly, this gives a huge edge to your local micro-roaster, and not because it’s “free trade”, or “local”, or even because they buy better beans (all of which may, or may not, matter to you), but because the chemistry itself dictates that locally roasted coffee will taste better. Funny how often this basic lesson seems to come up so frequently in food and cooking, and how much better suited to good eating (albeit more time consuming) is the old-school model of grocery shopping, in which we would buy our daily bread from a baker, our vegetables from the produce stand of a farmer who grew them, the fish from a fishmonger who just caught it. Easy rule: If you can’t figure out when it was roasted, you probably don’t want to buy it.
- If you’re going to store your beans for any length of time (and we do this as a matter of course – there is idealism, and there is keeping the family sane and the parents well-fueled at all times), try to get them in vacuum packs (to reduce air contact), and store them in the freezer (to mitigate the deleterious effects of temperature).
- Grind it when you’re going to drink it, and only brew what you’re going to drink. I don’t know about you, but I just don’t buy the argument that grinding your own beans is messy and time-consuming; and since the actual science tells me that I can drink better coffee simply by grinding my own, that seems to me a pretty cheap and easy way to consume a superior product. If you must brew a larger quantity first thing in the morning, then at least transfer it to an airtight carafe or thermos or whatever in order to slow down the nasty effects of heat and air on your beverage.
There is, as ever in the kitchen, an object lesson in all this: Simply by buying my coffee fresh and close to home, by preparing it when I actually want to drink it, and by only making the quantity that I actually want to drink, I will drink better coffee.
Sex, Lies, and Tomatoes: The Recipes
The good news, as of this writing (a reprint from my previous website, if you’re wondering about the timeline), is that our local tomato spring truly has sprung. Not exactly on-time, however – more like, finally. As in, Finally, it’s about [expletive] time, because I live alongside some of the finest tomato plants in the known universe, and it’s just plain wrong to make me wait until late August to get my fix. In fairness, to live in Sonoma County is hardly akin to the forced deprivation of an extended tour on a nuclear submarine or offshore oil rig; sufficiently desperate for Solanum lycopersicum, I could purchase the irredeemable supermarket facsimile year-round. However, as I’ve already tried to explain, I won’t – I can’t – subject my family’s taste buds to such effrontery, and neither should you to yours. But here and now, the farmer’s market is literally teeming with tomatoes, at the stalls of the dedicated specialists (e.g, Dan Magnuson’s Soda Rock Farms), as well those of the many other outstanding growers I’m lucky enough to shop with (Preston Vineyards, Foggy River and Early Bird Farms, to name but a few); I’m even getting regular contributions from my own garden, and I really suck at growing tomatoes.
I’ll cook all sorts of things with tomatoes over the next couple of months, and once in a while I may even get a little cutesy and dress them up (for years I’ve been tempted, but failed to muster the courage, to mount an assault on Alain Passard’s legendary tomate farcie confit aux douze saveurs, still, as I understand it, a fixture of the menu at L’Arpege). Still and all, I typically treat tomatoes much the way I’d treat a peach, erring on the side of simplicity over complexity, part of my ongoing effort simply not to screw up a thing that began as nearly perfect before I got involved. However, unlike a peach – the peach being one of those rare foods that seems almost impossible to improve either by fiddling with or adorning it – the tomato is a remarkably versatile foil, tolerating temperatures from hot to cold, equally content as condiment and centerpiece, visually arresting whether highly processed or nearly naked, an unimpeachable accompaniment for seafood, steak, and cheese alike. The first tomatoes of the season, however, deserve a special respect, a period of honest assessment and contemplation, and this – more than a little like the first night back with your spouse after a long business trip or following an exaggerated bitchfest about something neither of you can even remember – seems best done naked, or at least nearly so.
Thus, as we continue eat our way through the first few batches of ripe little gems from our own garden, the dominant themes resonate around salads and sandwiches. The variations are truly limitless, but I really liked the most recent incarnation, as pictured at the top of this post, so here you go (the recipe for pesto follows at the end):
Heirloom Tomato Sandwiches on Cranberry-Semolina with Pesto, Olive Oil, and Salt
You could use virtually any tomatoes here, and – ideally – I think you’d serve a few different ones, both for variety of color and flavor. A red-toned beauty (Purple Cherokee, Pink Lady, or Early Girl), a yellow (Tangerine or Lemon Boy), and a green (Green Zebra) would provide a gorgeous array of color as well as a distinctive breadth of flavors, sweetness, and acidity. Similarly with the bread, you could use anything, really, but a lightly toasted, crusty sourdough works particularly well. I hadn’t planned it ahead of time, and I would not have thought of a fruit-laced bread had it not been lying around, but the almost impossibly good Cranberry-Semolina from the Full Circle Bakery in Penngrove worked exceedingly well, with the chewy, sweet-tart bite of the cranberries adding just the right ballast against the acidic tomatoes and the licorice notes in the pesto.
- Toast some slices of the bread, preferably a crusty sourdough with a baked-in dried fruit (cranberries, apricots… nuts in the bread, for some reason, sound unpleasant to me, although I can’t say why, because nuts and fruits go well together, there are already nuts in pesto… hmmmm… maybe next time?)
- Top each slice of bread with a thick slice of tomato – ideally, slices of a few different colors, although my garden wasn’t cooperating on that front – and then top each slice of tomato with a small quenelle of pesto. (Why bother with a quenelle? Because it takes almost zero effort and the uniform shape will look nice against the slightly irregular backdrop of the heirloom tomato and crusty bread, and because it will show off the effort you put into your pesto.)
- Sprinkle with fleur de sel and drizzle the plate with olive oil, preferably from Dry Creek, such as that from Preston or the pricier, but exceptional, Da Vero.
Classic Pesto (from M Hazan)
I’ve talked at length about pesto and its Mediterranean cousin, pistou here, and I like all sorts of variations, and many have a particular place (with cheese; without cheese; for fish; for pasta Genovese), but nothing – and I’ve made and consumed many hundreds in my life – is ever quite the equal of the classic Italian variety, and no version seems quite so perfect as the simple food-processor method of M Hazan’s, described accurately, along with some pretty decent comments and observations, here, in case you don’t have the book (Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, which, by the way, is one of my few “must have” cookbooks, certainly a Top 10, maybe a Top 5).
Hazan’s is so easy, and so perfect, that I can not possibly add anything without also diluting it. However, I will emphasize that, if you’re going to make pesto, in addition to following Ms Hazan to the letter, you must heed a few basic rules (these are, of course, common to all cooking, but the simplicity and intensity of pesto offers even less slack than usual):
- Use good basil. You really ought to grow your own – it’s cheap and easy, even for a challenged gardener like me. Make sure it’s the Genovese varietal: There are many basils, but you only want to make classic pesto with the particularly aromatic Genovese basil and its distinctive note of licorice.
- Use good olive oil (it needn’t be your best – Costco’s organic extra virgin is just fine, and in fact better and cheaper than most), and probably an oil that leans more toward the grassy than the buttery end of the spectrum.
- Use only freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano and Pecorino Romano cheeses. Seriously, don’t buy the waxy, shrink-wrapped, Swiss-cheese-tasting crap from the market, don’t buy it pre-grated in tubs from Trader Joe’s, and never, not ever, shall you pour grated cheese from a shiny green can – not for any reason, but specifically not into your pesto.
- Be careful about your garlic: First, try to find a grower that offers more than one kind, and that can describe the difference. Some are just way too hot and spicy. Rose de Lautrec is my go-to garlic if I can only have one, but obviously whatever the Italians classically use for pesto would be fine (I buy Rocambole from Bernier Farms, in the possibly misguided belief that this is what I would get in Italy). But be careful, because different garlics are not at all equivalent, and this extends to measurements: What, precisely, is a “clove” of garlic? The same bulb could have cloves varying in size by a factor of 4; and different types of garlic could have their heat vary by a factor of 4; so you could have a recipe calling for “2 cloves” and it could mean 2 or 32, from one extreme to the other. There is no way to deal with this uncertainty except to learn to do it by taste, to learn the garlic you use, to learn how much for your pesto.
- Don’t forget to season it, but don’t risk over-salting until all the cheeses are incorporated, as Romano in particular is very salty.
Major shakeup at Santa Rosa Certified Farmers’ Market
Longtime Santa Rosa Certified Farmer’s Market manager Paula Downing has been removed from her position by the six-member market board of directors.
News of the seemingly sudden dismissal from the popular Veteran’s Hall market was sent by letter to the 111 members of the SRCFM — mostly producers and farmers who sell at the Wednesday and Saturday markets — on October 4. Downing has not been at the market since Sept. 30.
According to the letter, obtained by BiteClub, the board decided not to renew Downing’s agreement to manage the market under the terms Downing demanded. “Although we are not able to discuss all the reasons the decision was made due to our concern for Ms. Downing’s privacy, we assure you that our decision not to renew her agreement was warranted under the circumstances.”
Kathleen Miller of Beyers-Costin, attorney for the market and spokesperson for the board said, “Paula Downing had an independent contractor agreement with the market. She was seeking additional compensation and in the process of renegotiation she wanted more money than the market could pay her. The board made her an offer that included additional compensation, but it was not as much as she wanted. The board didn’t believe it was in the best interest of the market to give her as much as she was asking.”
Board members declined to speak publicly about the dismissal but stated in their letter to members that “Downing and her supporters have chosen to vilify and harass the board members as a result of our decision.”
Downing, when reached for comment today, said “It was not my decision to leave. I would never have put the market in this position by leaving at the height of the season. I feel guilty about the farmers get this kind of publicity, this is people’s livelihood.” She declined to elaborate further citing legal actions, but clarified that she was “asked to leave”.
Downing has been at the Santa Rosa Certified Farmer’s Market for eight years. She will continue to manage the Sebastopol Farmer’s market. In the interim, the board has announced that market veterans Susan Nystrom and Ellen Roberts will be acting as interim managers for the Saturday and Wednesday market respectively.
“Nothing about the market is changing except for the Management,” reads the letter to members. “The Board of Directors is working overtime to ensure a stable, healthy, vibrant Farmers’ Market, now and in the future.”
The shakeup comes on the heels of a months-long kerfuffle at the Tuesday night Sonoma Farmer’s Market. After a number of high-tension public meetings and votes, the city has required longtime manager Hilda Schwartz to submit a proposal to continue managing the Tuesday night market on the city plaza. The RFP process, in which anyone can submit a plan for the market, continues until November.
The Caffeine Addict: Palate Fail
I have a Coffee Mea Culpa and it is this: I like bad coffee. Not awful coffee – I care not at all for the taste of two-day-old-and-tasting-of-burnt-gym-socks coffee, of low-grade beans apparently canned sometime during the early days of the Cold War, of Dunkin’ Donuts or McDonald’s drive-through “Cafes” – but coffee that is, in some objective sense, not ideal.
I know this because I have a competent palate, as far as it goes: Not that of a professional cook’s, but the ability to perceive, in a broadly objective sense, whether or not a dish tastes “right” – whether it’s properly seasoned, exhibits balance, consists of flavors that work well or poorly together, that sort of thing; and the flip side of tasting objectively (OK, fine, “objective taste” may be conceptually oxymoronic, but I’m sticking to my guns on this one: There is such a thing as objective quality with respect to food, and no matter how many shades of subjective gray might litter the middle of the spectrum, the “good” and “bad” extremes remain unequivocal) is that one must – eventually and, more likely, frequently – face the fact that what is good and what one likes do not always coincide in one’s mouth. Case in point and back on-thread: Coffee.
I’ve written elsewhere about the merits of locally-based “micro” roasters, and specifically why freshness – of both the roast and its subsequent percolation – has such a dramatic impact on the flavor of this uniquely stimulative and life-sustaining elixir. The thing is, once you understand why the flavor of coffee goes bad (it’s all about the reduction-oxidation process, as explained by the Specialty Coffee Association people here), you must also accept that most popular, commercially available “fresh” beans are overcooked: Heat is ultimately an enemy of coffee aromatics, so really hard roasting, at least as practiced by industry leaders Starbucks and Peets, inevitably raises the proportion of “bad” flavors and degrades the proportion of many “good” ones. But I do love my Peets, my Badass Coffee Co’s French Roast, my syrupy cup of liquid amphetamine midnight of whatever provenance. (Starbucks may be a godsend in an airport or the middle of Interstate 5, but otherwise, you can keep your SBUX.) Seriously – all those bitter, smoky, dark-chocolate flavors in a good cup of Peet’s? If the price is that I lose some subtlety, that I buy more blends than “single origins”, that there is just a hint of burnt? I will happily settle up on those terms, because everything else strikes me as watery or, worse, dirty.
That being said, I can also recognize when I’m wrong, and in this case, I’m wrong – in an objective sense, Peets et. al. uniformly roast their beans too hot, for too long, or both – I’m not sure which – in order to get their exceptionally dark roast. So, while I love it, I also accept it for what it is, and more importantly, what it isn’t: If I really cared about the terroir of coffee the way I do about wine, I would buy it from somebody like Blue Bottle or, more probably, our own local roaster, the Flying Goat: Both (amongst many others that I’m ignorant of) specialize in fair-trade, organic beans of the highest quality, emphasize the importance of individual terroirs, and – in order to express this specialization – both roast to a significantly lesser degree than Peets or any of their ilk. Case in point: I hadn’t heard of Blue Bottle until recently when La Familia B (who, by any definition, count amongst the ranks of the unrepentant foodie) gifted us the baggie pictured northwesterly. Provenance of the roast? Date-stamped 72 hours prior, somewhere in the East Bay. So my wife and I dutifully brewed up this little baggie of buzz: We dutifully let the water come off the boil; we patiently awaited the French press and tolerated its inevitable lacing of sludge; in short, we gave this coffee whatever chance we could to show off its true colors. The result? Pretty damned good, if you like it in all its medium-roasted, slightly dirty glory. I can accept it as more balanced, more complex, more unique than my crude-oil version. But still and all, I’m sorry, it just wasn’t to my personal taste: Scorched though it may be, give me the black-as-night, stain-your-teeth brew any day. I know I’m wrong, but I just like it that way.
Fresh by Lisa Hemenway: PIX
BiteClub’s been reporting on Lisa Hemenway’s new venture, Fresh, for several months now. But last night was the first time I’ve seen the market/restaurant in full swing since opening in late September.
It’s been a work-in-progress for a few weeks as staff were trained, shelves stocked and the in-store restaurant worked out. But on a bustling Wednesday night, the restaurant was at capacity, with locals munching on wood-fired pizzas, ravioli and salads. It’s a unique concept for the area — housing a wine bar and casual resto (where BiteClub saw several local culinary heavy-hitters enjoying dinner) in the midst of a market where folks are picking out their zucchini and crab cakes. But it works, making for a nice community space where neighbors picking up milk can say hello to friends in the dining room.
Fresh, open 8am to 9pm daily, 5755 Mountain Hawk Way, Santa Rosa.
Here are some interior photos…