Big spread in the Chronicle’s F&W section for our town this past weekend! From restaurants to tasting rooms, wow. Chateau Montelena, Dutch Henry, and Kelly Fleming are Vintner Members at Solage, Joe and Jill Cabral of Lava Vine are members, and the Lynches and everyone at Bennett Lane have always been loyal solbar supporters.
Archive for June, 2010
-
more pork. surprised? me neither.
This week, Andrew and Ryder brought in pork racks from Long and Bailey Farms, and Goose brined them with rosemary, brown sugar, black pepper, and apple juice. The term for cleaning up a rack (be it buffalo, rabbit, or anything in between), is “french”. Now normally when we french a rack of anything, we trim it all the way down so that there is no fat or sinew left on top of the “eye”–the long loin muscle that is the eye of the rib, or ribeye (and which becomes the saddle of lamb or veal or the strip loin of beef in those respective animals)–and the bones are made long and clean.
-
Rutherford dust
On Friday, Lily Berlin came to our staff lineup before dinner service to pour her wines for the crew. She and her family are the owners and operators of El Molino, on of the smallest wineries in NV and (I believe) the only one that makes Pinot Noir from exclusively Rutherford grapes. They also make a Chardonnay, and those are their only two labels. It’s an insider’s wine, rather than a cult wine–there’s no tasting room, there’s no marketing scheme, but it’s available if you ask for it.
-
it’s late and I’m tired.
It’s finally fruit fruit and more fruit as the rains have stopped and the sun ripens everything . . . we have peach cobblers going out to banquets, red plum mostarda on the new duck breast, and a killer parfait of lemon cream and crumbled graham crackers with Ortiz Farms raspberries on the solbar dessert menu. Look for pecan French toast with vanilla-poached peaches at breakfast soon.
-
auction napa valley 2010
Last Thursday night, Zach and I went to Shane and Suzanne Phifer-Pavitt’s house to cook a Wine Auction dinner. Ted Osborne is the winemaker for Olabisi and Datenight (which is Suzanne’s Cab), the labels of the five wines that were poured over the course of dinner. I’m going to let the pictures tell the story (Kim Wedlake, Ted’s wife, took the good ones), and try and locate a couple of links for pieces done by food writers who were at the dinner.
-
this is the totem pole. you’re down here.
I used to be such a sweet sweet thing
till they got ahold of meThe kitchen of The Tonic, a well-conceived and -funded but relatively-short-lived-then-reconceived restaurant on 17th between 6th and 7th in 1999, was the first place and time I was ever yelled at, and by “yelled” I mean a full-throated, profane scream–along with coaching, suggestions, insults, encouragement, discouragement, a dare from the executive chef to punch him in the face (glad I didn’t try), blistering sarcasm, and flat-out laughter and dismissal in French, pidgin French, Spanish, Farsi, and Canadian.
-
oak cliff III & IV
The two zins were giants, and we thought lamb was the meat to stand up to them–game would’ve also worked but is generally a little more lean, and we used lamb saddle and a red wine-garlic lamb sausage to give real power to the dish. To contrast, rather than compement, the spice and fruit in the two wines, we served the lamb with socca nicoise (a chickpea crepe), salsa verde (full of herbs and olive oil), and a ragout of yellow wax and blue lake beans with tomato confit.
Above is the saddle, all bone and sinew removed, and with the loin and tenderloin muscles seasoned and rolled inside the cleaned and pounded fat cap. And here is the finished dish:
Tasty. -
oak cliff II
The pinot noir from Oak Cliff was huge, juicy, cherry-y, just LARGE. A broad canvas for medium-weight savory foods–the sous chefs and I threw poached eggs, softshell crab, scallops, pork, mushrooms, cold duck breast, and ricotta agnolotti at it before we decided to contrast its fruitiness, and to evoke the understated earthiness in its depths: we went with a ragout of santa cruz morels and hen-of-the-woods mushrooms accompanied by seared scallops, pork belly lardons, and english peas.
