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- ekoVenture | Adventure vacations | Ski trips, safaris, & more on 2009-11-11
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Summer Express: 101 Simple Meals Ready in 10 Minutes or Less - New York Times on 2009-11-09
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Summer Express: 101 Simple Meals Ready in 10 Minutes or Less
By MARK BITTMANThe pleasures of cooking are sometimes obscured by summer haze and heat, which can cause many of us to turn instead to bad restaurants and worse takeout. But the cook with a little bit of experience has a wealth of quick and easy alternatives at hand. The trouble is that when it’s too hot, even the most resourceful cook has a hard time remembering all the options. So here are 101 substantial main courses, all of which get you in and out of the kitchen in 10 minutes or less. (I’m not counting the time it takes to bring water to a boil, but you can stay out of the kitchen for that.) These suggestions are not formal recipes; rather, they provide a general outline. With a little imagination and some swift moves — and maybe a salad and a loaf of bread — you can turn any dish on this list into a meal that not only will be better than takeout, but won’t heat you out of the house.
1 Make six-minute eggs: simmer gently, run under cold water until cool, then peel. Serve over steamed asparagus.
2 Toss a cup of chopped mixed herbs with a few tablespoons of olive oil in a hot pan. Serve over angel-hair pasta, diluting the sauce if necessary with pasta cooking water.
3 Cut eight sea scallops into four horizontal slices each. Arrange on plates. Sprinkle with lime juice, salt and crushed chilies; serve after five minutes.
4 Open a can of white beans and combine with olive oil, salt, small or chopped shrimp, minced garlic and thyme leaves in a pan. Cook, stirring, until the shrimp are done; garnish with more olive oil.
5 Put three pounds of washed mussels in a pot with half a cup of white wine, garlic cloves, basil leaves and chopped tomatoes. Steam until mussels open. Serve with bread.
6 Heat a quarter-inch of olive oil in a skillet. Dredge flounder or sole fillets in flour and fry until crisp, about two minutes a side. Serve on sliced bread with tartar sauce.
7 Make pesto: put a couple of cups of basil leaves, a garlic clove, salt, pepper and olive oil as necessary in a blender (walnuts and Parmesan are optional). Serve over pasta (dilute with oil or water as necessary) or grilled fish or meat.
8 Put a few dozen washed littlenecks in a large, hot skillet with olive oil. When clams begin to open, add a tablespoon or two of chopped garlic. When most or all are opened, add parsley. Serve alone, with bread or over angel-hair pasta.
9 Pan-grill a skirt steak for three or four minutes a side. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, slice and serve over romaine or any other green salad, drizzled with olive oil and lemon.
10 Smear mackerel fillets with mustard, then sprinkle with chopped herbs (fresh tarragon is good), salt, pepper and bread crumbs. Bake in a 425-degree oven for about eight minutes.
11 Warm olive oil in a skillet with at least three cloves sliced garlic. When the garlic colors, add at least a teaspoon each of cumin and pimentón. A minute later, add a dozen or so shrimp, salt and pepper. Garnish with parsley, serve with lemon and bread.
12 Boil a lobster. Serve with lemon or melted butter.
13 Gazpacho: Combine one pound tomatoes cut into chunks, a cucumber peeled and cut into chunks, two or three slices stale bread torn into pieces, a quarter-cup olive oil, two tablespoons sherry vinegar and a clove of garlic in a blender with one cup water and a couple of ice cubes. Process until smooth, adding water if necessary. Season with salt and pepper, then serve or refrigerate, garnished with anchovies if you like, and a little more olive oil.
14 Put a few slices of chopped prosciutto in a skillet with olive oil, a couple of cloves of crushed garlic and a bit of butter; a minute later, toss in about half a cup bread crumbs and red chili flakes to taste. Serve over pasta with chopped parsley.
15 Call it panini: Grilled cheese with prosciutto, tomatoes, thyme or basil leaves.
16 Slice or chop salami, corned beef or kielbasa and warm in a little oil; stir in eggs and scramble. Serve with mustard and rye bread.
17 Soak couscous in boiling water to cover until tender; top with sardines, tomatoes, parsley, olive oil and black pepper.
18 Stir-fry a pound or so of ground meat or chopped fish mixed with chopped onions and seasoned with cumin or chili powder. Pile into taco shells or soft tacos, along with tomato, lettuce, canned beans, onion, cilantro and sour cream.
19 Chinese tomato and eggs: Cook minced garlic in peanut oil until blond; add chopped tomatoes then, a minute later, beaten eggs, along with salt and pepper. Scramble with a little soy sauce.
20 Cut eggplant into half-inch slices. Broil with lots of olive oil, turning once, until tender and browned. Top with crumbled goat or feta cheese and broil another 20 seconds.
21 While pasta cooks, combine a couple cups chopped tomatoes, a teaspoon or more minced garlic, olive oil and 20 to 30 basil leaves. Toss with pasta, salt, pepper and Parmesan.
22 Make wraps of tuna, warm white beans, a drizzle of olive oil and lettuce and tomato.
23 The New York supper: Bagels, cream cheese, smoked salmon. Serve with tomatoes, watercress or arugula, and sliced red onion or shallot.
24 Dredge thinly sliced chicken breasts in flour or cornmeal; cook about two minutes a side in hot olive oil. Place on bread with lettuce, tomato and mayonnaise.
25 Upscale tuna salad: good canned tuna (packed in olive oil), capers, dill or parsley, lemon juice but no mayo. Use to stuff a tomato or two.
26 Cut Italian sausage into chunks and brown in a little olive oil; chop onions and bell peppers and add them to the pan. Cook until sausage is browned and peppers and onions tender. Serve in sandwiches.
27 Egg in a hole, glorified: Tear a hole in a piece of bread and fry in butter. Crack an egg into the hole. Deglaze pan with a little sherry vinegar mixed with water, and more butter; pour over egg.
28 New Joe’s Special, from San Francisco: Brown ground meat with minced garlic and chopped onion. When just about cooked, add chopped spinach and cook, stirring, until wilted. At the last minute, stir in two eggs, along with grated Parmesan and salt and pepper.
29 Chop prosciutto and crisp it in a skillet with olive oil; add chopped not-too-ripe figs. Serve over greens dressed with oil and vinegar; top all with crumbled blue cheese.
30 Quesadilla: Use a combination of cheeses, like Fontina mixed with grated pecorino. Put on half of a large flour tortilla with pickled jalapenos, chopped onion, shallot or scallion, chopped tomatoes and grated radish. Fold tortilla over and brown on both sides in butter or oil, until cheese is melted.
31 Fast chile rellenos: Drain canned whole green chilies. Make a slit in each and insert a piece of cheese. Dredge in flour and fry in a skillet, slit side up, until cheese melts.
32 Cobb-ish salad: Chop bacon and begin to brown it; cut boneless chicken into strips and cook it with bacon. Toss romaine and watercress or arugula with chopped tomatoes, avocado, onion and crumbled blue cheese. Add bacon and chicken. Dress with oil and vinegar.
33 Sauté 10 whole peeled garlic cloves in olive oil. Meanwhile, grate Pecorino, grind lots of black pepper, chop parsley and cook pasta. Toss all together, along with crushed dried chili flakes and salt.
34 Niçoise salad: Lightly steam haricot verts, green beans or asparagus. Arrange on a plate with chickpeas, good canned tuna, hard-cooked eggs, a green salad, sliced cucumber and tomato. Dress with oil and vinegar.
35 Cold soba with dipping sauce: Cook soba noodles, then rinse in cold water until cool. Serve with a sauce of soy sauce and minced ginger diluted with mirin and/or dry sake.
36 Fried egg “saltimbocca”: Lay slices of prosciutto or ham in a buttered skillet. Fry eggs on top of ham; top with grated Parmesan.
37 Frisée aux lardons: Cook chunks of bacon in a skillet. Meanwhile, make six-minute or poached eggs and a frisée salad. Put eggs on top of salad along with bacon; deglaze pan with sherry vinegar and pour pan juices over all.
38 Fried rice: Soften vegetables with oil in a skillet. Add cold takeout rice, chopped onion, garlic, ginger, peas and two beaten eggs. Toss until hot and cooked through. Season with soy sauce and sesame oil.
39 Taco salad: Toss together greens, chopped tomato, chopped red onion, sliced avocado, a small can of black beans and kernels from a couple of ears of corn. Toss with crumbled tortilla chips and grated cheese. Dress with olive oil, lime and chopped cilantro leaves.
40 Put a large can of chickpeas and their liquid in a medium saucepan. Add some sherry, along with olive oil, plenty of minced garlic, smoked pimentón and chopped Spanish chorizo. Heat through.
41 Raita to the rescue: Broil any fish. Serve with a sauce of drained yogurt mixed with chopped cucumber, minced onion and cayenne.
42 Season boneless lamb steaks cut from the leg with sweet curry powder. Sear on both sides. Serve over greens, with lemon wedges.
43 Migas, with egg: Sauté chopped stale bread with olive oil, mushrooms, onions and spinach. Stir in a couple of eggs.
44 Migas, without egg: Sauté chopped stale bread with chopped Spanish chorizo, plenty of garlic and lots of olive oil. Finish with chopped parsley.
45 Sauté shredded zucchini in olive oil, adding garlic and chopped herbs. Serve over pasta.
46 Broil a few slices prosciutto until crisp; crumble and toss with parsley, Parmesan, olive oil and pasta.
47 Not exactly banh mi, but... Make sandwiches on crisp bread with liverwurst, ham, sliced half-sours, shredded carrots, cilantro sprigs and Vietnamese chili-garlic paste.
48 Not takeout: Stir-fry onions with cut-up broccoli. Add cubed tofu, chicken or shrimp, or sliced beef or pork, along with a tablespoon each minced garlic and ginger. When almost done, add half cup of water, two tablespoons soy sauce and plenty of black pepper. Heat through and serve over fresh Chinese noodles.
49 Sprinkle sole fillets with chopped parsley, garlic, salt and pepper; roll up, dip in flour, then beaten egg, then bread crumbs; cook in hot olive oil about three minutes a side. Serve with lemon wedges.
50 The Waldorf: Toast a handful of walnuts in a skillet. Chop an apple or pear; toss with greens, walnuts and a dressing made with olive oil, sherry vinegar, Dijon mustard and shallot. Top, if you like, with crumbled goat or blue cheese.
51 Put a stick of butter and a handful of pine nuts in a skillet. Cook over medium heat until both are brown. Toss with cooked pasta, grated Parmesan and black pepper.
52 Grill or sauté Italian sausage and serve over store-bought hummus, with lemon wedges.
53 Put a tablespoon of cream and a slice of tomato in each of several small ramekins. Top with an egg, then salt, pepper and grated Parmesan. Bake at 350 degrees until the eggs set. Serve with toast.
54 Brown small pork (or hot dog) chunks in a skillet. Add white beans, garlic, thyme and olive oil. Or add white beans and ketchup.
55 Dredge skate or flounder in flour and brown quickly in butter or oil. Deglaze pan with a couple of spoonfuls of capers and a lot of lemon juice or a little vinegar.
56 Make a fast tomato sauce of olive oil, chopped tomatoes and garlic. Poach eggs in the sauce, then top with Parmesan.
57 Dip pork cutlets in egg, then dredge heavily in panko; brown quickly on both sides. Serve over lettuce, with fresh lemon, or bottled Japanese curry sauce.
58 Cook chicken livers in butter or oil with garlic; do not overcook. Finish with parsley, lemon juice and coarse salt; serve over toast.
59 Brown bratwursts with cut-up apples. Serve with coleslaw.
60 Peel and thinly slice raw beets; cook in butter until soft. Take out of pan and quickly cook some shrimp in same pan. Deglaze pan with sherry vinegar, adding sauce to beets and shrimp. Garnish with dill.
61 Poach shrimp and plunge into ice water. Serve with cocktail sauce: one cup ketchup, one tablespoon vinegar, three tablespoons melted butter and lots of horseradish.
62 Southeast Asia steak salad: Pan- or oven-grill skirt or flank steak. Slice and serve on a pile of greens with a sauce of one tablespoon each of nam pla and lime juice, black pepper, a teaspoon each of sugar and garlic, crushed red chili flakes and Thai basil.
63 Miso steak: Coat beef tenderloin steaks (filet mignon) with a blend of miso and chili paste thinned with sake or white wine. Grill or broil about five minutes.
64 Pasta with fresh tomatoes: Cook chopped fresh tomatoes in butter or oil with garlic until tender, while pasta cooks. Combine and serve with grated Parmesan.
65 Sauté squid rings and tentacles in olive oil with salt and pepper and garlic; add chopped tomatoes. Cook until the tomatoes break down. Serve over pasta.
66 Salmon (or just about anything else) teriyaki: Sear salmon steaks on both sides for a couple of minutes; remove. To skillet, add a splash of water, sake, a little sugar and soy sauce; when mixture is thick, return steaks to pan and turn in sauce until done. Serve hot or at room temperature.
67 Rich vegetable soup: Cook asparagus tips and peeled stalks or most any other green vegetable in chicken stock with a little tarragon until tender; reserve a few tips and purée the rest with a little butter (cream or yogurt, too, if you like) adding enough stock to thin the purée. Garnish with the reserved tips. Serve hot or cold.
68 Brush portobello caps with olive oil; sprinkle with salt and pepper and broil until tender. Briefly sweat chopped onions, then scramble eggs with them. Put eggs in mushrooms.
69 Buy good blintzes. Brown them on both sides in butter. Serve with sour cream, apple sauce or both.
70 Sauté squid rings and tentacles in olive oil with salt and pepper. Make a sauce of minced garlic, smoked pimentón, mayo, lots of lemon juice and fresh parsley. Serve with a chopped salad of cucumber, tomato, lettuce, grated carrot and scallion, lightly dressed.
71 Press a lot of coarsely ground black pepper onto both sides of filet mignon or other steaks or chopped meat patties. Brown in butter in a skillet for two minutes a side. Remove steaks and add a splash of red wine, chopped shallots and a bit of tarragon to skillet. Reduce, then return steaks to pan, turning in the sauce for a minute or two.
72 World’s leading sandwich: prosciutto, tomato, butter or olive oil and a baguette.
73 Near instant mezze: Combine hummus on a plate with yogurt laced with chopped cucumbers and a bit of garlic, plus tomato, feta, white beans with olive oil and pita bread.
74 Canned sardines packed in olive oil on Triscuits, with mustard and Tabasco.
75 Boil-and-eat shrimp, cooked in water with Old Bay seasoning or a mixture of thyme, garlic, paprika, chopped onion, celery, chili, salt and pepper.
76 Make a thin plain omelet with two or three eggs. Sauté cubes of bacon or pancetta or strips of prosciutto until crisp. Cut up the omelet and use it and the meat to garnish a green salad dressed with olive oil and balsamic vinegar.
77 Sear corn kernels in olive oil with minced jalapeños and chopped onions; toss with cilantro, black beans, chopped tomatoes, chopped bell pepper and lime.
78 Cook shrimp in a skillet slowly (five minutes or so) to preserve their juices, with plenty of garlic and olive oil, until done; pour over watercress or arugula, with lemon, pepper and salt.
79 Liverwurst on good sourdough rye with scallions, tomato and wholegrain mustard.
80 Not-quite merguez: Ground lamb burgers seasoned with cumin, garlic, onion, salt and cayenne. Serve with couscous and green salad, along with bottled harissa.
81 Combine crab meat with mayo, Dijon mustard, chives and tarragon. Serve in a sandwich, with potato chips.
82 Combine canned tuna in olive oil, halved grape tomatoes, black olives, mint, lemon zest and red pepper flakes. Serve with pasta, thinning with olive oil or pasta cooking water as needed.
83 Pit and chop a cup or more of mixed olives. Combine with olive oil, a little minced garlic, red pepper flakes and chopped basil or parsley. Serve over pasta.
84 Cook chopped tomatillos with a little water or stock, cilantro and a little minced fresh chili; serve over grilled, broiled or sautéed chicken breasts, with corn tortillas.
85 A winning sandwich: bresaola or prosciutto, arugula, Parmesan, marinated artichoke hearts, tomato.
86 Smoked trout fillets served with lightly toasted almonds, shredded fennel, a drizzle of olive oil and a sprinkle of lemon.
87 Grated carrots topped with six-minute eggs (run under cold water until cool before peeling), olive oil and lemon juice.
88 Cut the top off four big tomatoes; scoop out the interiors and mix them with toasted stale baguette or pita, olive oil, salt, pepper and herbs (basil, tarragon, and/or parsley). Stuff into tomatoes and serve with salad.
89 Pasta frittata: Turn cooked pasta and a little garlic into an oiled or buttered skillet. Brown, pressing to create a cake. Flip, then top with three or four beaten eggs and loads of Parmesan. Brown other side and serve.
90 Thai-style beef: Thinly slice one and a half pounds of flank steak, pork shoulder or boneless chicken; heat peanut oil in a skillet, add meat and stir. A minute later, add a tablespoon minced garlic and some red chili flakes. Add 30 clean basil leaves, a quarter cup of water and a tablespoon or two of soy sauce or nam pla. Serve with lime juice and more chili flakes, over rice or salad.
91 Dredge calf’s liver in flour. Sear in olive oil or butter or a combination until crisp on both sides, adding salt and pepper as it cooks; it should be medium-rare. Garnish with parsley and lemon juice.
92 Rub not-too-thick pork or lamb chops with olive oil; sprinkle with salt and pepper plus sage or thyme. Broil about three minutes a side and drizzle with good balsamic vinegar.
93 Cut up Italian sausage into chunks and brown in a little olive oil until just about done. Dump in a lot of seedless grapes and, if you like, a little slivered garlic and chopped rosemary. Cook, stirring, until the grapes are hot. Serve with bread.
94 Ketchup-braised tofu: Dredge large tofu cubes in flour. Brown in oil; remove from skillet and wipe skillet clean. Add a little more oil, then a tablespoon minced garlic; 30 seconds later, add one and a half cups ketchup and the tofu. Cook until sauce bubbles and tofu is hot.
95 Veggie burger: Drain and pour a 14-ounce can of beans into a food processor with an onion, half a cup rolled oats, a tablespoon chili powder or other spice mix, an egg, salt and pepper. Process until mushy, then shape into burgers, adding a little liquid or oats as necessary. Cook in oil about three minutes a side and serve.
96 A Roman classic: In lots of olive oil, lightly cook lots of slivered garlic, with six or so anchovy fillets and a dried hot chili or two. Dress pasta with this.
97 So-called Fettuccine Alfredo: Heat several tablespoons of butter and about half a cup of cream in a large skillet just until the cream starts to simmer. Add slightly undercooked fresh pasta to the skillet, along with plenty of grated Parmesan. Cook over low heat, tossing, until pasta is tender and hot.
98 Rub flank steak or chuck with curry or chili powder before broiling or grilling, then slice thin across the grain.
99 Cook a couple of pounds of shrimp, shell on or off, in oil, with lots of chopped garlic. When they turn pink, remove; deglaze the pan with a half-cup or so of beer, along with a splash of Worcestershire sauce, cayenne, rosemary and a lump of butter. Serve with bread.
100 Cook red lentils in water with a little cumin and chopped bacon until soft. Top with poached or six-minute eggs (run under cold water until cool before peeling) and a little sherry vinegar.
101 Hot dogs on buns — with beans!
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Explorer - Sonoma County, Calif. - Explorer - Sonoma County, Calif. - On the ... on 2009-11-09
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On the Trail of a Sustainable Feast in Sonoma
Heidi Schumann for The New York TimesGolden Nectar Farm in Windsor, Calif., uses a mobile chicken coop to bolster the sustainability of the small suburban operation.
Published: June 1, 2008THE psychedelic, hand-painted, Mushroom Man pickup truck parked at the New Carpati Farm in Sonoma County, Calif., just outside the town of Sebastopol, was the first sign that this vacation was going to be a little out of the ordinary.
After a short tour of the grassy property and a stop to pet the baby chicks in their coop with a view of the verdant valley in the distance, my husband, Craig Havighurst, and I entered a little plastic hut. Inside, a few rows of shelving each held several oak-sawdust “logs.” As our eyes adjusted to the relative dark, bunches of meaty shiitake and gorgeous canary-yellow oyster mushrooms popped out of the logs in invitation, almost like gold in a mine. “See those white hairs on top?” said Steve Schwartz, owner of the New Carpati Farm and our guide on this culinary pilgrimage. “It means it’s super fresh. You would never see that in a grocery.”
A visit to Mr. Schwartz’s low-tech little mushroom hut on his three-acre farm is a revelation in many ways. But it’s one that most Sonoma County visitors never have, since most are only headed for the area’s excellent wineries. “If you just do the wineries,” said Mr. Schwartz, “you’re missing out.”
After a four-day tour of farms — with a few wineries thrown in — I had to agree. We had come to Sonoma County specifically for the food. Inspired by the “locavore” movement, in which Earth-aware consumers go to great lengths to eat only locally grown, sustainable food from within a 100-mile radius of their home, we decided to take a locavore holiday, creating an entire meal from farms we had personally visited and farmers we had personally met.
This was possible because of Sonoma County Farm Trails, an agrotourism and farm-marketing group that supports sustainable agricultural diversity. It has 165 farm members in Sonoma County that invite interaction with the public in some way —from farm stands to farm tours. Having had its 35th anniversary in 2007, it is one of the oldest, largest and most diverse agrotourism organizations in the United States.
The farms of the Sonoma County Farm Trails are dotted throughout the county anywhere wine grapes and creeping development have spared a patch of land. They are mostly working family farms, making time for visitors generally by appointment.
Wanting the full farm experience — and a kitchen to cook in — we were glad to find Full House Farm, also outside Sebastopol, which offers one of the few farm stays in the county. With our oenophile friends, Kelli Back and Gary Pemberton, we settled into the guesthouse, giddy over the view of the horses in the valley below, which we could see from the picture windows or from the Adirondack chairs perched on the hill. Amenities included our own kitchen garden and a bowl of freshly laid eggs. From Full House Farm, our food-sourcing radius would be a mere 20 miles: north to Healdsburg, west to Bodega, south to Petaluma and points between.
“People are divorced from where their food comes from,” said Ana Stayton at our first stop, Golden Nectar Farm on the southwest outskirts of Windsor. A nutrition educator and lay herbalist, Ms. Stayton, along with her husband, John, co-founder and director of the country’s first green M.B.A. program, at Dominican University of California, runs Golden Nectar with the goal of “helping people imagine the possibilities in their own lives of having a connection to the natural world and living more sustainably.”
A tour of their 2.5-acre farm — past a studio made with straw bales, an outdoor cob kitchen, a car that runs on vegetable oil and a hen-mobile that ferries a handsome assortment of chickens to fresh pecking grounds — feels like a stroll through someone’s giant backyard, albeit someone with the audacity to grow 150 varieties of fruit, from kiwis to blackberries, figs to plumcots.
“This farm was designed as an experiment in biodiversity,” said Ms. Stayton, reaching under a blueberry bush to yank a stray asparagus stem out of the ground for us to taste. As an organic farm that uses only natural fertilizers and pesticides, the diversity and rotation of plants helps keep the soil healthy and pests at bay, Ms. Stayton explained while an intern began transplanting some onions near the blueberries to see if they would ward off pesky gophers.
Although it’s on a slightly bigger scale — 17 acres right off U.S. 101 near Santa Rosa — Tierra Vegetables is run with a similar philosophy. “We want people to know where their food comes from,” said Wayne James, who happened to be there, chatting with a repeat customer who was buying up all the strawberries, when we dropped by the bountiful farm stand that fronts his neatly tractored, though wildly diverse cropland. His sister and the farm’s co-owner, Lee James, was running their stall at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market, where San Francisco epicures seek out Tierra particularly for its vast array of chilies and chili products.
Tierra encourages visitors — especially children — to roam its fields. “Organic is part of our sustainable practice,” Mr. James said, “but not all. The work we do here is environmentally, socially and economically sustainable. It has to be all three.”
The good news, he continued, is that “a lot more people understand what we’re doing nowadays.”
Proof of that is in the growing numbers of people who frequent farmers’ markets and join community-supported-agriculture programs, like Tierra’s, in which families become subscribers and pay the farmer in advance for a weekly delivery of fresh produce. Shaken into a new awareness by contaminated foods (E. coli spinach, anyone?) that have traveled an average 1,500 fuel-guzzling miles from a farm who-knows-where to your table, more Americans are eager to know their farmers and understand how their food is grown.
Even after visiting Love Farms, however, you may not fully understand the progressive methods of Ron Love. A city farm smack in the middle of Healdsburg (and a favorite of local chefs), its six acres boast 200 different organic crops throughout the year. A talk with Mr. Love quickly veers from his explanation of why his rows of tomatoes are growing up out of plastic-covered ground (the Israeli-desert-style irrigation conserves water and controls weeds and enables him to get his tomatoes on the market before anyone else’s) to a discussion of the heady biodynamics of Rudolf Steiner and his prescriptions for organic farming with a spiritual bent, or what Mr. Love calls “the next level of consciousness.”
“We don’t understand the geometry of the living world,” Mr. Love said. “The ’60s generation are the last people who can farm. We need a framework of valuing becoming a farmer.”
That’s also a concern for the mushroom man Steve Schwartz, who learned to grow mushrooms while teaching women to do so in Thailand in his Peace Corps days and who now works with California FarmLink, which helps preserve family farms by matching up retiring farmers with the next generation of aspiring back-to-the-landers.
There’s no better way to cultivate that next generation than by getting kids out on the farm, which is exactly why many of these farmers take time out of their 80-hour-plus work weeks to give tours. There was a particularly happy assortment of human kids playing with exuberantly friendly goat kids at Redwood Hill Farm, a certified humane farm where all 350 goats have names.
Though it has a small-scale industrial creamery, Sebastopol-based Redwood Hill is still family-run and still makes award-winning goat cheese by hand in small batches, said the understated, gray-haired woman who led our tour of the creamery (it is open to the public a few weekends each year). It was only after we had followed the trail of the various cheeses to the aging racks — seeing how some varieties grow a little moldier and hairier by the week as they age to perfection — and swooned over the taste of creamy-tart crottin and Camembert-like Camellia, that we realized our guide was the owner, Jennifer Bice, a goat-cheese maker since 1978.
If there is one thing you learn from visiting farms, it’s that sustainable farming is an endless challenge. But on a drive toward the Sonoma coast, the environmental payoff is abundantly clear: rolling green hills, freely grazing cows, diversity of terrain.
Head for bohemian Bodega (population 500), and you’ll wind up at Bodega Artisan Cheese. After 22 years as a goat rancher, Patty Karlin is still pushing the envelope at her 60-goat farm and dairy, where she makes cheeses for farmers’ markets and local restaurants. In her 90-minute eco-tour, she shows how she’s moving off the power and water grid — with solar panels and a pond-fed, tiered irrigation system — in an attempt to zero out the ranch’s bills. ”Everything I do has to be a model for the third world,” said Ms. Karlin, who is also a consultant to African farmers.
In the creamery, we saw the experimental Gouda she had made that morning with her young apprentice. And before a cheese tasting, we sampled the exotic microgreens that her apprentice-tenants sell to high-end restaurants under the name Earthworker Farm.
At McEvoy Ranch in Petaluma, the view may be richer and grander, with 18,000 olive trees planted over 80 acres of a 550-acre ranch, but it is still strictly sustainable and organic. Nan McEvoy, a former chairwoman of The San Francisco Chronicle, was the first to bring Tuscan-style olive oil production to Northern California. Her olive ranch and country home on the hills of the border of Sonoma and Marin Counties are as luxurious as her oils. On the frequent and thorough two-hour tour, you’ll visit the olive orchards (each tree will produce roughly a gallon of oil each year) and the milling room (a giant granite stone crushes the olives, pits and all) before tasting the green and grassy extra virgin oil.
After our McEvoy visit, we had done it: We had sourced an entire meal of ingredients fresh from the farms that grew them. So what did we make from our bounty? Our friend Kelli substituted Bodega Artisan ricotta for the cow’s-milk version she normally uses for her ricotta gnocchi — to startlingly light and luscious effect. We made a sauce of New Carpati shiitake and oyster mushrooms; Tierra Vegetables adolescent garlic and fresh fava beans (absolutely worth the double-shucking); Love Farms basil and oregano; and McEvoy Ranch olive oil.
The microgreens salad from Earthworker Farm was a vision with its edible orange nasturtium and blue borage flowers, topped with crumbled Redwood Hill Farm feta and dressed with an olive-oil-lemon vinaigrette from the Meyer lemon tree outside our door.
It was one of the freshest, most satisfying meals we’d ever made, made even better by good friends and local sauvignon blanc.
FROM THE MUSHROOM MAN TO GOATS THAT HAVE NAMES
Sonoma County Farm Trails publishes a free map and guide (707-571-8288; www.farmtrails.org). You can read about California FarmLink’s programs at www.californiafarmlink.org. The following farms welcome visitors for tours by appointment only.
New Carpati Farm, 4241 Bartleson Road, Sebastopol; (707) 829-2978; free tour with purchase of produce or $5 for adults and $1 for children over 12.
Golden Nectar Farm, 6364 Starr Road, Windsor; (707) 838-8189; www.goldennectar.com; $15 per person (minimum two adults), children free.
Tierra Vegetables, 651 Airport Boulevard, Santa Rosa; (707) 837-8366; www.tierravegetables.com; $5.
Love Farms, 15069 Grove Street, Healdsburg; (707) 433-1230; www.lovefarms.com; tour free with purchase.
Redwood Hill Farm, 2064 U.S. 116 north, Sebastopol; (707) 823-8250; www.redwoodhill.com; free farm and creamery tours on selected dates.
Bodega Artisan Cheese, (707) 876-3483; www.bodegaartisancheese.com; $75 for five people or fewer and $15 for each additional person.
McEvoy Ranch, 5935 Red Hill Road, Petaluma; (707) 778-2307; www.mcevoyranch.com; orchard tours on selected dates, $25.
Full House Farm, 1000 Sexton Road, Sebastopol; (707) 829-1561; www.fhfarm.com; rates start at $215 a night plus a $125 cleaning fee for a three-bedroom guesthouse.
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The New York Times > New York City Restaurant Reviews on 2009-11-09
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WINES OF THE TIMES
Happiness for $10 or Less
By ERIC ASIMOVHOW much do you want to spend on a bottle of wine? The intuitive answer, of course, is as little as possible. That stands to reason, except that the way people buy wine is anything but reasonable.
For most consumers, wine-buying is an emotional issue. The restaurant industry has a longstanding belief that the lowest-priced wine on the list will never sell. Nobody wants to be seen as cheap. But the second-lowest-priced wine, that’s the one people will gobble up.
Buying retail is a slightly different experience. Most people don’t feel as if their retail purchases are windows into their ignorant, miserly souls, the way they do in restaurants, and so are less inhibited.
Still, rationality doesn’t often enter into buying decisions. For some, money is meaningless, whether that’s true because of huge credit lines, daddy’s millions or success in business. These people will buy whatever is most expensive. Others, in a vinous form of anti-intellectualism, insist that no wine can be worth more than — pick your figure — and that only dupes will spend more.
Whichever the case, the issue of value — the ratio of quality to price — rarely enters into it.
Leave it to the Dining section’s wine panel to try to fill this vacuum. In a tasting of 25 red wines all $10 or under, we tried to pick out not only the best bottles but also the best regions to explore for good values.
Let’s face it, you can find hundreds if not thousands of bottles in this price range, down to the lowest of the low. We cannot try them all and say, “Here are the 10 best.” But we can give you some suggestions as to where to look, while offering up some good examples.
For the tasting, Florence Fabricant and I were joined by Jill Roberts, a portfolio manager for Valckenberg, an importer of German wines, and Chris Goodhart, the wine director of Balthazar in SoHo.
Frankly, the $10-and-under price range may represent the cheapest wines, but I feel the best values are in the $10-to-$20 range, where you can find sensational wines made by small producers using traditional techniques. These sorts of wines are much harder to find at $10 and under.
But this is September, that time of the year when the reality of summer vacation bills dims the hope of Christmas splurges, so right now every dollar helps. Here’s what we know:
In today’s winemaking world, there’s no excuse for bad wines. Technology and knowledge have reached the point where any wine ought to be purchased without fear of a spoiled or tainted bottle. Even Two-Buck Chuck is palatable, though I wouldn’t insult you by telling you it’s good. The exception is corked wines. Regardless of cost, bad corks can elude even the most meticulous examination.
While consumers can expect all wines to be palatable, finding interesting ones is another matter. Mass-producing inexpensive wine is a lot easier than creating wines with personality. In this price range, the great divide is between wines you can drink and wines you want to drink.
The wines we recommend are gulpable and satisfying with a modest level of intrigue. You cannot expect much complexity at this level, or subtlety. But you can hope for something more than the most basic, and you can strive to avoid wines that are obviously confected or manipulated to achieve a predetermined set of characteristics.
Our No. 1 wine, the 2002 Padre Pedro from Casa Cadaval in the Ribatejo region of Portugal, is a case in point. This wine indeed had personality, with cherry fruit, spice and smoke flavors and enough tannin to give it structure. Alas, the Padre Pedro may be hard to find now, because Casa Cadaval has changed importers since this vintage. But in general Portugal is an excellent source for good, inexpensive wines, especially those from the Douro and those, like the Padre Pedro, from the Ribatejo region.
This wine is labeled Ribatejano, which is a wine that comes from Ribatejo but doesn’t follow the appellation’s rules. It’s made from an unlikely mixture of grapes, including cabernet sauvignon, pinot noir, alicante bouschet and castelão, a Portuguese grape known in other parts of the country as periquita.
Likewise, our No. 2 wine, the 2005 Domaine de l’Ameillaud, doesn’t fit into established categories. It is labeled a Vin de Pays de Vaucluse because the grapes come from vineyards just outside the Côtes-du-Rhône zone. Nonetheless it is fresh and attractive with typical Rhone flavors buttressed by just enough tannin to keep the wine lively. For great values in French wines, it pays to look outside the more popular appellations.
In Spain, too, the best deals generally come from little-known areas like Montsant or Toro. Our No. 3 wine, the 2005 Viña Gormaz tempranillo, is an exception. It comes from a backwater in an established region, the Ribera del Duero in Spain, and is made by a little-known producer, Gormaz, that until 2004 was the growers’ cooperative. It all adds up to an unpretentious, juicy wine for $9.
Surprisingly, the ’06 Beaujolais-Villages from Georges Duboeuf, the best-known wine in the tasting, did well. I say surprisingly because Duboeuf’s less expensive Beaujolais can often taste candied or artificially sweet, but this one was delightful.
You might wonder why I haven’t mentioned any American wines. We did taste six American wines, along with five from Italy, four from France, three from Spain, two from Portugal, and one each from Australia, South Africa, Uruguay, Argentina and Greece.
I don’t usually think of American wines as great values. Too often the producers try to imitate expensive wines using artifice — mediocre cabernet sauvignon flavored with oak chips, for example — rather than making more honest wines from lesser grapes.
Nonetheless, two American wines made our list, the 2005 Wyatt cabernet sauvignon and the 2004 Ravenswood merlot, a pretty good showing.
Probably the biggest surprise in our tasting was the 2006 Domaine Monte de Luz from Uruguay, which is sort of the Toledo Mud Hens of the major winemaking leagues.
But hold on. Uruguay may have a lot in common with Argentina, although its winemaking is not yet at Argentina’s level. But Uruguay has not been at it as long.
Nonetheless, just as Argentina has focused on malbec, an obscure grape from southwestern France, Uruguay grows a lot of tannat, an obscure grape also grown in Madiran in southwestern France as well as in the Basque region. This wine was a little rough and rugged, yet distinctive and interesting. Try it with a steak, preferably grass-fed.
Tasting Report: Structure and Personality, With a Small Price Tag
Casa Cadaval Portugal Ribatejano , $8.99, ***
Padre Pedro 2002
Smoke, earth, cherry and spice flavors in a well-structured Old World wine (Importer: HGC Imports, San Jose, Calif.).
Domaine de l’Ameillaud France , $9, ** ½
Vin de Pays de Vaucluse 2005
Mild tannins with attractive, lingering flavors of berry, cassis and olive (David Bowler Wine, New York).
Viña Gormaz Spain Ribera del Duero , $9, **
Tempranillo 2005
Fresh and juicy with a lively spiciness (Classical Wines, Seattle).
Georges Duboeuf France , $9, **
Beaujolais-Villages 2006
Juicy, fruity and floral. Decent Beaujolais best served chilled (W. J. Deutsch & Sons, Harrison, N.Y.).
Altas Cumbres Argentina Mendoza , $9, **
Cabernet Sauvignon 2005
Lingering, jammy flavors of cherry and licorice (RV Distributors, Hoboken, N.J.).
Wyatt California Cabernet Sauvignon 2005 , $10, **
Big and almost over the top with dark fruit, oak and spice flavors.
J. Vidal-Fleury France , $10, **
Côtes-du-Ventoux 2005
Aroma of burnt rubber gives way to flavors of bitter cherry and spices (W. J. Deutsch & Sons, Harrison, N.Y.).
Domaine Monte de Luz , $7, **
Uruguay Tannat 2006
Rich and plummy with smoky, spicy cherry flavors (Baron Francois, New York).
Ravenswood California Vintner’s Blend , $10, **
Merlot 2004
Fruit, floral and spice flavors; straightforward and pleasant.
Paringa , $9, * ½
South Australia Cabernet Sauvignon 2005
David Hickinbotham Individual Vineyard
Big and powerful with berry, oak and fruit flavors (Grateful Palate Imports, Oxnard, Calif.).
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A Sip, a Smile, a Cheery Fizz - New York Times on 2009-11-09
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Prosecco Reviews
Drusian D.O.C. Brut NV
$17
***
What more could you ask for in a prosecco? Dry, tangy and refreshing with citrus and floral flavors. (Importer: Panebianco, New York)Nino Franco Rustico D.O.C. NV
$15
***
Off-dry, yet well balanced with peach and mineral aromas and flavors. (Vin Divino, Chicago)Aneri D.O.C. Brut NV
$20
**½
Unusual, yet dry and refreshing, with aromas of citrus, minerals and anise. (Palm Bay Imports, Boca Raton, Fla.)Zardetto Zeta D.O.C. 2004
$22
**½
Lightly sparkling, with floral and peach aromas; off-dry, yet balanced. (Winebow, New York)BEST VALUE
Zardetto Conegliano Brut NV
$10
**½
Peach, apricot and floral aromas; dry and very refreshing. (Winebow, New York)Mionetto Sergio Extra Dry NV
$18
**½
More full-bodied than most but balanced and creamy, with mellow nut and citrus flavors. (Mionetto U.S.A., New York)Vallis Mareni Ombra Brut Spumante NV
$10
**
Lightly floral, crisp and refreshing. (Omni Wines, New York)Mionetto Brut NV
$11
**
Softly sparkling, with persistent lemon, apple and nut flavors. (Mionetto U.S.A., New York)Riondo D.O.C. Extra Dry NV
$13
**
Off dry, with pretty pear and apple flavors. (Wine Source Selections, South Kearny, N.J.)Bisol D.O.C. Crede Brut NV
$14
**
Not quite dry, with citrus and floral flavors. (Vias Imports, New York)
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New Improved Bartenders Can Be Quite Old-Fashioned - NYTimes.com on 2009-11-09
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Let 100 (O.K., 8) Bartending Philosophies Bloom
Published: December 2, 2008TEN years ago, cocktail seekers would have been hard-pressed to find a bar that used fresh juice in sour mix (never mind adding microplaned zest), and ordering an Aviation would have earned a cold look instead of a refreshing but potentially lethal mixture of gin, lemon juice and maraschino liqueur.
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Stuart Isett for The New York TimesNEO-CLASSICIST Murray Stenson making magic at Zig Zag Cafe in Seattle.
Related
Recipe: Meyer Beautiful (December 3, 2008)
Recipe: Lopsidedly Perfect Martini (December 3, 2008)
Recipe: The Leap Frog (December 3, 2008)
Hiroko Masuike for The New York TimesToday drinkers don’t need to search far to find bartenders who not only squeeze their own citrus, but make their own bitters, have an encyclopedic knowledge of drinks and stock spirits imported, on the sly, in a suitcase.
But as the number of ambitious bars has proliferated, so have their ways of doing things. Interviews with dozens of bartenders around the country suggest that the cocktail movement is becoming so diverse and sophisticated that it encompasses several distinct approaches and philosophies.
Some bartenders fastidiously devote themselves to resurrecting century-old recipes, while others use chemicals and modern techniques. Seasonal fruits and fresh herbs come to the foreground at certain bars, but play a minor role in other establishments that try instead to wring maximum effect from the bottles on their shelves.
Sometimes, these approaches overlap. A bartender might add in-season blood oranges to a 19th-century-inspired punch, for instance. And there’s some danger to naming distinct schools of thought in an industry whose practitioners can’t even agree whether to call themselves mixologists, bartenders, bar chefs or some other name.
Nevertheless, some of the leading bars in the country may be placed in one of the following categories.
PRE-REPEAL REVIVALISTS
Philosophy This school is inspired by the late 19th and early 20th century, when bartending was a public and flamboyant art. Commonly if incorrectly called pre-Prohibition (some great drinks were invented during the dry years), the pre-repeal revival represents a complete aesthetic, from dress (arm garters and waistcoats), to décor (mahogany, gaslights), to language (menus that read like broadsheets), to grooming (the waxed mustache).
Guiding spirit Jerry Thomas, author of “How to Mix Drinks or the Bon-Vivant’s Companion: The Bartender’s Guide,” first published in 1862.
Bars, bartenders and drinks At the Clover Club in Brooklyn, Julie Reiner (also of the Flatiron Lounge in New York) has revived punch and with it, the punch bowl. Sasha Petraske, of White Star and Milk & Honey in New York, gave the speak-easy ethos an edgy, downtown cool.
NEO-CLASSICISTS
Philosophy Often confused with pre-repeal revivalism, neo-classicism updates long-forgotten cocktail recipes by bringing in such cutting-edge techniques as fat washing (infusing a high-proof spirit with a fatty ingredient, like brown butter). Just as important are the atmospheric decisions: the person making a classic cocktail might be wearing jeans and a T-shirt and playing Talking Heads on the iPod.
Guiding spirit The online Cocktail Database (www.cocktaildb.com), the most complete resource for all manner of mixed drinks, past and present.
Bars, Bartenders and Drinks Audrey Saunders infuses gin with tea for the Earl Grey MarTEAni at Pegu Club in New York. Other practitioners include Jim Meehan at PDT in New York, Charles Joly at the Drawing Room in Chicago, Daniel Hyatt at the Alembic Bar in San Francisco and Murray Stenson at Zig Zag Cafe in Seattle.
FARM-TO-GLASS MOVEMENT
Philosophy Rather than being structured around a primary spirit, like whiskey or bourbon, farm-to-glass drinks are driven by produce, usually seasonal fruit or herbs: persimmons in fall, anise hyssop leaves in spring. The movement is at its fullest flower on the West Coast, with its 12-month growing season, and in restaurants, where there’s a daily bounty of produce and other ingredients not normally seen in bars.
Guiding spirit Scott Beattie, whose “Artisanal Cocktails: Drinks Inspired by the Seasons from the Bar at Cyrus” (Ten Speed, 2008) is shaping up to become the indispensable cookbook of farm-to-glass cocktails. (Interestingly, Mr. Beattie identifies more with the liquid locavore movement.)
Bars, bartenders and drinks At the two Hungry Cat restaurants, in Hollywood and Santa Barbara, Calif., the Rhumpkin is made from rum and kabocha squash syrup. Other locations include Restaurant Eve in Alexandria, Va., and T’afia in Houston.
LIQUID LOCAVORES
Philosophy Nine craft distilleries operate within the city limits of Portland, Ore., and it’s a point of pride for some bartenders there to fashion a drink around local spirits. Northern California also has a surfeit of craft distilleries, and Chicagoans craft drinks with the gins made by the city’s North Shore Distillery.
Guiding spirits Craft distillers like Miles Karakasevic of Charbay in St. Helena, Calif., and Lee Medoff and Christian Krogstad of House Spirits in Portland, Ore.
Bars, bartenders and drinks At Cyrus in Healdsburg, Calif., Scott Beattie’s Meyer Beautiful incorporates Charbay Meyer lemon vodka. At Clyde Common in Portland, Ore., Kevin Ludwig rebuilt the Negroni around Krogstad aquavit from House Spirits.
HOME BREWERS
Philosophy It’s no longer uncommon for bars to make their own bitters, but some take the craft to the next level, devising their own recipes for fortified wines and other infusions.
Guiding spirit Tenzing Momo, a store in Seattle that has rare and exotic dried herbs, spices and mixers.
Bars, bartenders and drinks At the Bel Ami Lounge in Eugene, Ore., Jeffrey Morgenthaler serves a gin and tonic made with his own recipe for agave-sweetened quinine syrup. Daniel Shoemaker at the Teardrop Lounge in Portland, Ore., crafts his own vermouth, falernum, blueberry shrub (a kind of cordial) and 15 bitters.
MINIMALISTS
Philosophy A minimalist cocktail typically contains no more than five ingredients, and changing any one of them (rather than adding a different flavor) results in a new cocktail. It’s a firm but respectful pushback against the sometimes baroque concoctions inspired by classic drinks recipes.
Guiding spirit Ice. The proper ice is to the minimalists what a ripe white peach is to the farm-to-glass movement. The Violet Hour, in Chicago, uses eight kinds, depending on the drink.
Bars, bartenders and drinks Toby Maloney of the Violet Hour prepares three iterations of the martini: “wet” (two parts gin to one part dry vermouth), “lopsidedly perfect” (gin with more dry than sweet vermouth) and “double reverse perfect” (more sweet vermouth than dry). Greg Best at Holeman & Finch Public House in Atlanta tries never to use more than four ingredients. Other exponents include Jamie Boudreau at Tini Bigs in Seattle and John Gertsen at Drink in Boston.
MOLECULAR MIXOLOGISTS
Philosophy Strictly speaking, molecular mixology refers to the application of science to the bar, and the use of stabilizers and other compounds for surprising effects. Some prefer the term “progressive cocktails,” pointing out that many of their techniques are old-fashioned, such as smoking or infusing. Still, most drinks pack a gee-whiz punch, as seen in the current fascination with solid, edible cocktails.
Guiding spirits Modernist chefs like Ferran Adrià, Wylie Dufresne and Heston Blumenthal.
Bars, bartenders and drinks Eben Freeman at Tailor in New York tops his variation on the Blood and Sand with foamy orange juice stabilized by Versa Whip and xanthum gum. The Manhattan at José Andrés’s Bar Centro in Los Angeles is garnished with a solidified sphere of cherry juice.
FAUX TROPICALISTS
Philosophy Faux tropical bars start with the proposition that the Mai Tai and Singapore Sling were once respectable cocktails. Mixing fresh juices, homemade syrups and a dozen or more other ingredients, these bars seek to restore the reputation of tiki drinks.
Guiding spirits Don the Beachcomber and Trader Vic.
Bars, Bartenders and Drinks Martin Cate’s Forbidden Island in Alameda, Calif., offers a Don the Beachcomber formula called the Nui Nui, with fresh citrus, pimento liqueur, cinnamon and vanilla syrups, and aged Barbados rum. Luau, which opened in Beverly Hills in October, revives recipes from a bar of the same name opened in 1953 by one of Lana Turner’s seven husbands.
Bars on the Cutting Edge
ALEMBIC BAR 1725 Haight Street, San Francisco, (415) 666-0822.
BAR CENTRO 465 South La Cienega Boulevard, Los Angeles, (310) 246-5555.
BEL AMI LOUNGE 1591 Willamette Street, Eugene, Ore., (541) 485-6242.
CAFÉ ATLÁNTICO 405 Eighth Street NW, Washington, (202) 393-0812.
CLOVER CLUB 210 Smith Street, Brooklyn, (718) 855-7939.
CYRUS 29 North Street , Healdsburg, Calif., (707) 433-3311.
CLYDE COMMON 1014 SW Stark Street, Portland, Ore., (503) 228-3333.
DEATH & CO. 433 East Sixth Street, New York, (212) 388-0882.
DRAWING ROOM 937 North Rush Street, Chicago, (313) 266-2694.
DRINK 348 Congress Street, Boston, (617) 695-1806.
FORBIDDEN ISLAND 1304 Lincoln Avenue, Alameda, Calif., (510) 749-0332.
HOLEMAN & FINCH PUBLIC HOUSE 2277 Peachtree Road, Atlanta, (404) 948-1175.
THE HUNGRY CAT 1535 North Vine Street, Los Angeles, (323) 462-2155, and 1344 Chapala Street, Santa Barbara, Calif., (805) 884-4701.
LUAU 369 North Bedford Drive, Beverly Hills, Calif., (310) 274-0090.
PDT 113 St. Marks Place, New York, (212) 614-0386.
PEGU CLUB 77 West Houston Street, New York, (212) 473-7348.
RESTAURANT EVE 110 South Pitt Street, Alexandria, Va., (703) 706-0450.
T’AFIA 3701 Travis Street, Houston, (713) 524-6922.
TAILOR 525 Broome Street, New York, (212) 334-5182.
TEARDROP LOUNGE 1015 NW Everett Street, Portland, Ore., (503) 445-8109.
TINI BIGS 100 Denny Way, Seattle, (206) 284-0931.
THE VIOLET HOUR 1520 North Damen Avenue, Chicago, (773) 252-1500.
WHITE STAR 21 Essex Street, New York, (212) 995-5464.
ZIG ZAG CAFE 1501 Western Avenue, Seattle, (206) 625-1146.
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The Wine News Magazine - Twenty Years of Opus One on 2009-11-09
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Twenty Years of Opus One
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Red Wine Ingredient Increases Endurance, Study Shows - New York Times on 2009-11-09
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Red Wine Ingredient Increases Endurance, Study Shows
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A Challenger Arises for King Sushi - New York Times on 2009-11-09
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A Challenger Arises for King Sushi
LOS ANGELES
SOME things here are meant to be large: mudslides, Britney's house, the number of valet parkers per Brentwood dinner party guest (roughly 3 for every 12). Others run smaller: lines at museums, dogs that live in purses, food.
In a city where small plate restaurants have been the rage for several years now, the Japanese izakaya — a pub featuring savory snacks downed with sake or cold beer — is starting to shove the sushi bar off its pedestal.
The small dishes in izakayas typically come in traditional forms of tempura, simmered dishes called nimono and grilled dishes like yakitori skewers.
But from downtown's Little Tokyo, home to many izakaya hole-in-the-walls, to West Los Angeles, where a new-wave izakaya serves duck breast marinated in sake along with Basque sheep's milk cheese, Los Angeles may have the most inventive permutations of izakaya-style restaurants in the United States. The city's large Japanese population — more than 40,000 people — its proclivity for light eating and the cultural currency that Japanese food knowledge gives to people who make their livings impressing others, have combined to make it so.
"When you go into an izakaya here, you are looking for a predominantly Japanese crowd, and at least one big, hairy music industry type," said Jonathan Gold, the restaurant critic for LA Weekly. "It is the perfect kind of food for people with short attention spans."
Taku Suzuki, who is the general manager of two izakaya named Musha and has plans for at least one more, said the popularity of izakaya has grown in Los Angeles over the last two years. "I think people are getting tired of sushi," he said.
The dishes are usually shared with friends and designed so that "an office worker can have drinks and snacks with a colleague, but still be able to eat dinner later at home," said Eric C. Rath, an associate professor of history at the University of Kansas, and an expert on Japanese food history. Beer is mandatory.
My friend David and I visited many izakaya over the past month, and other than the boisterous farewell we got as we hit the door — "Arigato gozaimashita!" — each experience was different.
At Musha in Santa Monica we were greeted by a small cloud of steam rising from the platters of fried food and fragrant broths. The crowd was young and largely local and casual, crowded around low wooden tables.
Our clear, spicy wonton soup, flavored with kimchi, was an instant, sultry antidote to the driving rain outside. Soon, our table was covered with some of the restaurant's greatest hits.
There was my favorite, "M.F.C.," or Musha fried chicken, a fillet marinated in soy sauce, ginger, garlic and sake, tossed in cornstarch and deep fried, and kakuni stewed pork, which had been simmered in a big pot for half a day, cooled and then dipped in soy sauce, sake and sugar and cooked some more.
Eggplant tempura was equally delicious. Sushi tends to be on the menu of izakaya in Los Angeles, but not those in Japan. Do as the Japanese do, and stick with the fried, broiled and simmered sides of the menu. Though we didn't have it, the duck breast came with a small broiler, allowing patrons to cook their own thin slices.
A tarte Tatin, accompanied by a sprig of rosemary, was caramelized on the spot with a hand-held flame, an odd but decidedly sublime alternative to green tea ice cream. "In Tokyo an izakaya does not have much dessert because the main purpose there is to drink," Mr. Suzuki explained. "But personally I like sweets, especially Western desserts, so we have them."
In some ways, Orris, in West Los Angeles, is more tapas bar than izakaya. But people come for the sake as much as the wine, and the dishes with the Asian influences are the most exciting.
The chef, Hideo Yamashiro, presided over Shiro, a high-end and well-regarded fusion restaurant in South Pasadena for nearly two decades before opening this modestly priced, sun-drenched spot crammed into a row of noodle shops in a strip mall.
"We thought it would be nice to feature a global fusion izakaya," said Tatia Oshidari, the manager of Orris. "It is supposed to be a sort of mix and match, with lots of influences, even Mexican every once in a while. But we don't serve sushi rice or anything like that."
We were moved by the spring roll filled with seafood, served with a spicy yuzu sauce, and the Dungeness crab salad with ginger dressing, and Chinese ravioli filled with shrimp mousse in shiitake mushroom sauce. The trio of crab cakes with mustard grain sauce was fortifying, but made me long for the ponzu sauce.
After some valet parking drama, which seems to frame all dinner outings in Los Angeles, David and I settled into Torafuku. The restaurant is the only American outpost of the Tokyo restaurant specializing in rice cooked in a kamado, a 500-pound iron pot heated in an earthen oven.
Unlike the other spots we visited, with young crowds and a party atmosphere, Torafuku was hushed, its gray banquettes and pale suede chairs filled largely with Japanese families and business diners. Dinner, served on a white tablecloth, begins with hot herb-scented towels and ends with a bill closer to that of a good sushi spot.
Torafuku specializes in ingredients flown in from Japan, like the beef tongue, which melted on our own tongues, and the wild snapper head ($20), braised in sweet soy sauce. The jyako ton-ban yaki, sizzling baby anchovy rice served with a free range poached egg on a sizzling stone plate, is like a salty Rice Krispies treat.
Plates of cheek meats and sizzling rice were all beautifully presented, and yet we still found ourselves back at my hotel restaurant, snacking (on small plates) two hours later.
In Little Tokyo we hit a popular and far more traditional spot, Izakaya Haru Ulala. To use the word spare perhaps overstates the atmosphere. Japanese beer posters decorate the walls, and the menu is decorated with crayon drawings. Very little was over $7.
The pork and beef here are marinated and cooked into tender pats that melt like butter in the mouth. Promises of cod never materialized, largely, we concluded, because of language confusion. The vegetables, fried and bland, would have best been ignored.
With its less-refined dishes, overly loud music and focus on beer, Haru Ulala may have gotten us as close to an average Tokyo izakaya as we were going to get.
Douglas Erber, the president of the Japan America Society of Southern California, said Haru Ulala is the closest he gets to the experience he craves in Japan as soon as the wheels hit the tarmac.
"You don't have the cigarette smoke here," Mr. Erber said, "which I don't miss, but that one tinge of authenticity is off. You also don't have the same level of nigiyaka — party atmosphere — here because you take a train home in Japan, so people don't care how much they have to drink. There is just more of a cacophony of good will and fun."
But amazing stews of pork? That, they have.
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Cooking as if Punjab Were Part of Canada - New York Times on 2009-11-09
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Cooking as if Punjab Were Part of Canada
By SARA DICKERMANAS we drove toward the Punjabi Market — a densely packed collection of sari shops and Indian sweets stores south of downtown Vancouver — a local radio station helped get my husband, son and me primed for a weekend of Indian feasting. The winter sky was Windex blue and the air was near freezing, but inside the warm car, the speakers bounced with track after track of clubby Indian music.
This being Vancouver, however, just before we parked, the station switched over to a Mandarin talk show. Such a mashup of Asian cultures is par for the course in British Columbia's hub. Because of its huge Chinese immigrant population, Vancouver has earned its reputation as one of the continent's best places for Chinese food, but as with the radio station, that reputation can overshadow other faces of ethnic Vancouver.
On this visit, we had India on our minds. We set off to find innovative Indian food that strays beyond the boilerplate menus of butter chicken and lamb korma at so many Indian restaurants, in particular to see if the success of Vij's — the contemporary Indian restaurant that has become internationally famous — had spawned a modern-Indian movement, a kind of culinary parallel to the bhangra music I heard on that radio station.
Vancouver, with its vital mix of cultures, seems the perfect breeding ground for such cuisine. After all, Lizzie Collingham's insightful book "Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors" (Oxford University Press) reminds us that the food of India and its diasporas is at its core heterodox, influenced by the tastes of the Moguls, Portuguese, Chinese and British, who both distorted Indian food and globalized it. The first immigrants — almost all of them Sikh and Punjabi — arrived in British Columbia at the turn of the 20th century, after members of the empire's Indian troops had visited the area on their return trip from the Queen's 1887 Diamond Jubilee.
By 1908, more than 5,000 South Asians had migrated to Vancouver. That year, British Columbian Sikhs established their first permanent temple, or gurdwara, but it was also the year that immigration from India was banned; it remained so for the most part until the 1950's. But as immigration restrictions loosened up in the midcentury, the Vancouver area, particularly the nearby city of Surrey, became a true hub for Indian, especially Punjabi-speaking immigrants, including the restaurateur Vikram Vij.
In 2003, Vij's was described by Mark Bittman in The Times as "easily among the finest Indian restaurants in the world." Vij's cuisine, made in the all-female kitchen run by Mr. Vij's wife, Meeru, is not fusion exactly — the flavors are Indian, but rather than being a succession of stews, the dishes are adapted to a Western style of cooking: the restaurant's famous lamb popsicles (chops), for example, are marinated in mustard and white wine and cooked to a pinkish medium-rare. They are then served in a creamy, garlicky fenugreek curry that's not unlike a butter-chicken sauce, sans food coloring, but the meat is grilled to order, not stewed en masse.
As with any institution, Vij's is subject to rumors of decline like those that circulate among my Vancouver contacts, who rosily remember its humbler first location. But as a wide-eyed tourist, I found that Vij's provided a kind of dynamic Indian cuisine unmatched by anything I've tried before, even in London's Michelin-starred Indian restaurants.
Being an institution gives Vij's some latitude — people arrive expecting a wait, and in Vij's sleek lounge, waiting was actually kind of fun (don't wear four-inch heels, as I did, however). There were spice-friendly wines, many of them Canadian, including a very appealing Inniskillin chenin blanc, and perfect, crisp ales from a local brewery. But the passed hors d'oeuvres — tender poori stuffed with potatoes, and spicy, crispy cassava fries — were really what made the wait seem like a crowded cocktail party.
Eventually, we were escorted from the chic wood paneling of the lounge into the anthracite dining room, almost austere but for a stupendous carved wooden door at the entrance and jolly die-cut lanterns that cast incandescent elephants on the walls. Once seated, the food came fast: "We figure you've waited long enough," said our server with that peculiarly Canadian affability I encountered all weekend.
With dishes that are less familiar to the North American palate, Vij's hews closer to traditional form, like the leg of British Columbia goat, oven-braised then shredded into a kalonji curry, that we had; or black cardamom-scented jackfruit, the chewy tropical fruit that falls somewhere between an artichoke heart and a mushroom in taste. A slightly coconutty tomato-ginger curry is a grand Goan-style take on bouillabaisse, showcasing extraordinary local seafood like halibut, Dungeness crab and mussels. There is little room left when dessert time comes, and a bonbon or two, custom-made with hints of garam masala by the chocolatier Thomas Haas, serves as a sweet, hybrid synopsis of the evening.
A few blocks away from Vij's, Tamarind Bistro works its own version of Indian food in a Western mode. For years, Rubina in East Vancouver was considered one of the finest traditional Indian places in town — a veritable butter-chicken mecca — but in 2003, the Jamal family branched out into the more chic West Side of Vancouver with more of a crossover approach.
The décor at Tamarind is an amalgam of greens and burgundies and elaborately carved woodwork. Tamarind's menu, too, is a little shticky; strewn with puns like "korma sutra" and lots of lighthearted cocktails: chai spiked with frangelico, or an aggressive tamarind martini with a little chili kick. Like Vij's, it trims the standard book-length Indian menu to about a dozen offerings, some of which are appealingly snackish.
Tamarind was the first place I've eaten Bombay bhel — the classic street-food mix of chickpeas, crispy samosa bits, peanuts and potatoes, tossed in tamarind-mint chutney — from a plate and not a Styrofoam clamshell. It also offered up tamarind fries — soft, tangy frites that divided our party between those who like ketchup-sodden fries and those who seek crispness above all else. The best of all the appetizers, though, was the simla paneer, a luscious, very northern combination of rich paneer and a creamy fenugreek sauce.
As at Vij's, Tamarind sells scores of lamb popsicles in creamy curry (in this case fragrant with mint), but some dishes, like the service, fell flat: Kashmiri chicken and aloo gobi, the cauliflower and potato ragout, both lacked complexity. Nevertheless, Tamarind has a fine rein on seafood, particularly prawns, which arrived simply grilled from the tandoor oven and in a more baroque rich coconut-tomato-ginger sauce. And the simplest of dishes, steamed basmati rice, is at Tamarind a thing of beauty, each fragrant grain tender, but wholly separate from its neighbors.
Farther east on Broadway, Chutney Villa takes on the flavors of South India with an unstudied exuberance. In a dining room pulsing with tones of pumpkin, eggplant and lentil green, the chef, Chindi Varadarajulu, serves up plenty of South Indian dishes in a pancake mode — crisp dosas (the lentil and rice flour crepes), thicker uttappams and very tasty stuffed murtabak, a hard-to-find stuffed paratha filled with braised lamb flavored with cinnamon and star anise, then crisped on the griddle.
Chutney Villa's palate is entirely more fiery than Vancouver's standard: the sour heat of a tamarind-and-ginger kingfish curry served as an unexpected pore-opener, but it was compelling nonetheless (the kingfish inside it was overcooked, but I ignored it and kept spooning the sauce onto my rice.) Even better was a stir-fry of lamb, with shreds of coconut, cross-cut chilies, curry leaves and whole spices: star anise, fennel, mustard and coriander seed. All those textures make for an Indian dish unlike any I've tasted before, and its undeniable heat is modified by the fragrance of the spices and the fattiness of the coconut.
True to its name, Chutney Villa's other real accomplishment is in its condiments: soothing raitas, smokey sambars and, yes, chutneys. When I showed an interest in a particularly lovely chutney of pear and banana tempered with a bit of mustard seed, my server rewarded me by returning with a chutney caddy and spoonfuls of other, equally delicious mixtures, including a fiery coconut number and a smooth cranberry, banana and clove puree. Cranberries and bananas seem like strange ingredients for an Indian restaurant, but like all the restaurateurs I spoke with, Ms. Varadarajulu resists the word "fusion" when referring to her cuisine. "I try not to make it fusion," she said. "The basics are the same, but the main ingredients are not all indigenous to India."
Such flavor blendings are not exclusively the realm of the upwardly mobile West Side. Sprawling and a little run-down, East Vancouver turned out to be our go-to destination for inexpensive edible curiosities. The decidedly unfancy Green Lettuce, for example, serves Desi-style Chinese food; that is, Chinese food as it is prepared in Indian metropolises like Calcutta and Mumbai.
There were ginger chicken dumplings, coated in tart, brick-red chili paste; a scallion-rich stir fry made with lamb, not beef; and a chicken and eggplant sauté that was wokked with an extra dose of cilantro, chili and tanginess.
Despite my wanderings, I could not help but return to Vij's realm, and the second restaurant run by Vikram and Meeru Vij, Vij's Rangoli. The clever little Indian diner and takeout store sits just next door to its sibling. "Rangoli is a lunch spot-chai shop, bustling with people coming and going, like a tea shop on a side street in Bombay," Mr. Vij said, while Vij's has a darker, more nocturnal feel.
With brick red tiles, cheery Corian tabletops packed close together and an open, but screened kitchen, where diners can watch the cooks pat, pat, pat chapatis, Rangoli has a distinctive hustle to it. There are even Bollywood movies running on tiny screens in the bathroom. Despite the quick pace, service was still attentive. "I'll bring you a little yogurt," a young server reassured an elderly man who was blotting his forehead after eating a spinach and lentil soup. "It will cool you right down."
Offerings were more rustic and stewlike than the dinner options, but they were full of flavor and accompanied by delicious nan and bottomless chai. What is really nifty is Rangoli's take on tiffin: take-home meals all packed in foil bags, some frozen, some fresh, ready to be heated up at home for a quick weeknight meal.
Mr. Vij's marketing and product design is so sure-handed that he has even managed to make boil-in-a-bag food seem chic. As I paid up, I reminded myself that on the next drive up to Vancouver from Seattle, I had to remember to pack a cooler in which to carry home a week's worth of Rangoli meals.
VISITOR INFORMATION
The Punjabi Market is the neighborhood for Indian groceries, jewelry and classic Indian sweets like those served at All-India Sweets: burfi, a fudge-textured milk confection in myriad flavors, gulab jamun (milk fritters soaked in syrup), or ras malai (cheese dumplings in sweet milk custard). Sweets for two come to about 8 Canadian dollars ($7.34 U.S., at 1 Canadian dollar to 92 cents). Dinner prices below do not include tax, beverage or tip.
Vij's, 1480 West 11th Avenue, (604) 736-6664, www.vijs.ca. Dinner for two approximately 65 to 80 Canadian dollars.
Vij's Rangoli, 1488 West 11th Avenue, (604) 736-5711, www.vijsrangoli.ca. Lunch for two, 20 to 30 Canadian dollars.
Green Lettuce, 1949 Kingsway, (604) 876-9883. Dinner for two, 30 to 40 Canadian dollars.
Tamarind Indian Bistro, 1626 West Broadway, (604) 733-5335. Dinner for two, 50 to 60 Canadian dollars.
Chutney Villa, 147 East Broadway, (604) 872-2228. Dinner for two, 40 to 50 Canadian dollars.
Pacific Palisades Hotel, 1277 Robson Street, (604) 688-0461, www.pacificpalisadeshotel.com. Not the hippest hotel in Vancouver, perhaps, but with reasonably priced suites, stellar views on the upper floors and markedly genial service, Pacific Palisades is a good choice for traveling families. The king-size suite, upper floor, starts at 260 Canadian dollars; in the off season, it starts at 185 Canadian dollars.
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