My New Iphone, Sparkling Wine, and Other Things

I have an Iphone now. This has rather revolutionized my food blogging activities. Suddenly I can snap a decent picture anywhere I am at any time, then toss it up on the Internet immediately. Real-time food blogging and food writing. The new era is here. My mind is semi-blown. As this translates to you, you can now see what I ate recently with considerably less lag time. Amazing.

I am considering starting a Tumblr counterpart to this blog. For now, here's some recent Iphone photos of food and beverages. The holidays are a good time.





















Four glasses of Dom Pérignon (a gift, don't think me a total ass, just a semi ass) on Christmas Day. We are truly fortunate. As for the champers? Good, with a nice dry, pleasantly musky flavor, but I dunno....not 180 bucks a bottle good, says I. We tried Domaine Carneros's Le Reve blend today and I found it a much more pleasant and buttery bubbly.

























The Domaine Carneros sparkler tasting. Far left is the Brut Cuvee, our favorite, and fortitously, the least expensive. A sharp and tastefully sweet flavor. Eminently suitable for light summer dinners and hot evenings. In the middle is the Brut Rosé Cuvée de la Pompadour (guys, silly name) which is made with a blend of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. This was fine, but not really to my taste: slightly fruity, with considerable mineral overtones. The far right is the Blanc de Noir Cuvee or "white from black," a sparkling wine made from Pinot grapes. It had a musky and rather intense flavor, with a bit of a peppery bite.

Our next door neighbor, Kelvin, works for Domaine Carneros, and was gracious enough to show us around this Sunday. We were extremely impressed with their stuff - high quality and organic sparkling wines (as well as a swell pinot and some other things) with a real eye towards detail. The tasting area is also very nice, with complete table service and a nice cheeseplate, salmon, and caviar selection to accompany things. Not the cheapest tasting experience by any means, but certainly worthwhile in terms of quality.


The cheese plate at Carneros, chosen to accompany sparkling wines. Did I mention I am VERY VERY HAPPY with my Iphone's camera? I think I should.


The Iphone has even saved me from having to actually list the cheeses, since they are described quite extensively and accurately here. Good lord, I love technology.


The view from the Carneros simulated French chateau. A lovely day, with a tiny bit of haze in the hills. A nice departure from the miserable driving rain of the morning.



Another lovely scene. And a lovely day. Thank you, Domaine Carneros, sparkling fermented beverages, Apple Computer, Kelvin, my parents, etc etc. I may have left things out but I will apologize if addressed.

- F.G

Oyster Dressing: New Orleans Holiday Food, Frickin' Awesome

We love oyster dressing in our family. In fact, it's a bit of a pathology. A traditional New Orleans holiday dish, it's one of the things we have to have - otherwise family revolution may be instigated. The more oysters, the better. If people steal into the kitchen to jack a couple when no one is looking, well, that's part of the holidays.



OYSTER DRESSING
8-10 servings

White bread (4-5 toasted slices, night before)
One pan of cornbread (3 boxes of Jiffy)
One onion (big)
One green pepper
3/4 ribs of celery
Chicken stock
Fresh sage
Fresh thyme
Tablespoon of paprika
1/2 tablespoon of dry mustard
2-3 jars of oysters
Little bit of oyster liquor
Egg for binding (if you would like)

THE NIGHT BEFORE:

Make a pan of cornbread. The Jiffy mix is the best, unless you're one of those ambitious types who mix up in your own, in which case that is just super for you..Slice and toast your loaf of white bread the night before as well. You may use the cheap Sara Lee stuff or artisan French. I'm not convinced it makes a huge difference.

Saute the green pepper, onion, and celery, otherwise known as the Sacred Creole Trifecta Which Cannot Be Impeached. You want more onion then green pepper in the mix.

Crumble up the bread into a big mixing bowl, then add the sauteed vegetables. Mix it all up, depending on the level of chunkiness you prefer in your dressing.



Add the paprika, the dry mustard, the fresh herbs, and the egg. (The egg is not a requirement, in our family opinion, but use your own discretion.) If you have any poultry drippings on hand, they make a very nice addition. Add the oysters, along with a little bit of their liquor, along with a bit of chicken broth - enough to make it a little moist. Mix it up again.

Get a greased lasagna pan, then put the mixture inside of it. Smooth out with a spatula or a spoon.

Cook for about 20-30 minutes or so at 350 degrees, or until brown, crusty, and delicious. Superb with roasted poultry, cranberry sauce, and large quantities of good champagne.

Lamb Shanks Osso Bucco: Why We Have Winter

Bruce Aidells and Denis Kelly's Complete Meat Cookbook has proved an invaluable friend in our kitchen library. Whenever I find myself in need of a little red meat in my life, The Book is there to guide me in its preparation. I'm especially enraptured with this recipe for lamb shanks osso-bucco style. It's the sort of thing I love to whip out on a chilly (or semi-chilly - this is California) winter evening, when the world seems to call out for braised meat, red wine, and polenta. Perfection.

INGREDIENTS:

4-6 lamb shanks
Olive oil

SAUCE
1 ounce prosciutto, pancetta, or good old bacon
2 medium onions, sliced
1 carrot, chopped
2 tablespoons garlic
1 cup dry white wine
1 1/2 cups peeled, seeded, and diced fresh tomatoes, or seeded + diced canned tomatoes (the GOOD ones)
2 cups meat stock, preferably beef
2-3 strips of lemon peel
1 bay leaf
1 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme or oregano (I like thyme)

Get the oven up to 325 first off. Find a big oven-safe skillet or pot, then heat up the olive oil. Brown the shanks over high heat - about 5 to 7 minutes all told. Put the meat aside.

Pour off most of the fat from the pan, but not all, you damned puritan. Turn the heat down to medium, then toss in the prosciutto, onions, and carrot. Cook for ten minutes, stirring often, until the vegetables are nice and soft, then put in the garlic. Cook for one more minute, then put in the wine, tomatoes, and stock. Bring this all to a boil.

Toss in the lemon peel, bay leaf, rosemary, thyme, and the lamb shanks, then cover the pot with foil. Put it in the center of the oven. Bake for 1 1/2 to 2 hours, or until the meat is quite tender, turning from time to time during the cooking process. Remove the shanks and cover them to keep them warm. Degrease the sauce, take out the bay leaves and lemon peel, and then reduce by half over high heat. This could take a bit. Be patient. Add salt and pepper at your own discretion.



Serve with polenta or risotto. I'm a polenta girl myself. I served this with the Lee Brother's tarragon-lime carrots and some slow-cooked Southern collard greens, as well as a salad with a simple balsamic vinegrriate. I thought it made for a very nice winter combination. Break out a good Zin and you are living the good life, crappy weather, seasonal depression, and pre-or-post holiday ennui be damned.

Kru Sushi: Sacramento's Tastiest Raw Fish

Kru
2516 J Street
Sacramento, CA 95816-4815
(916) 551-1559

Kru is Sacramento's upscale sushi emporium, shooting for a crowd more interested in nuanced flavors and a hip ambience then the Mikuni adherents. Instead of gigantic mayonnaise-drenched rolls and sake-choco-tinis, Kru is more interested in producing refined nuevo-Japanese cuisine at upscale prices, in a chilled out (if hipster-infested) setting. The place isn't always 100%, but in my opinion, it's the region's tastiest and most "serious" sushi. Check it out. On this particular visit, they were really firing on all cylinders, and we had a downright delightful meal.



One of the daily specials consisted of monkfish, Japanese mushrooms, and flash-fried piquillo peppers, an extremely Spanish influenced dish. And did it ever taste that way. I was instantly reminded of the copious amounts of monkfish I consumed over the summer in Spain and especially in the Basque country - the perfectly cooked "poor man's lobster" was complimented perfectly by a snappy pan-sear and a soy sauce glaze. Just excellent.



We tried the gorgeous sashimi tapas, the chef's choice of fish. I will say right now I cannot recall exactly what all of this stuff was, other then that it was delicious and extremely attractive. A hell of a step up from the area's usual "sashimi samplers" - shoddily cut merely-okay fish slapped on a plate. Interesting but not overpowering sauces and accompaniments? Good.



Next was the Hawaiian walu and enoki mushroom "parcel" with soy, sake, and garlic, a special that found its way onto the permanant menu due to overwhelming popularity. For good reason. A nice subtle flavor permeated both the fish and the meaty, delightfully alien-like enokis.



A special of pork belly over a wild mushroom risotto. Not particularly Asian, but certainly very tasty, with the tender, uber-fatty pork in confluence with the earthy mushrooms. The risotto was a spot too dense.



Seaweed salad. I cannot not order this stuff, I am afraid. A good version here, though real seaweed dorks should check out Kru's other seaweed salad, which features weird-ass stuff doubtless scraped off the ocean floor.

Kru was spot on during this visit, and I'm certain I'll be returning to sample their interesting food in the future. Whenever I save up my pennies, anyhow. Great sushi don't come cheap. And that's probably the way it should be.

airport gumbo: praline connection

Airport food is generally a black and depressing void in the culinary landscape, but some exceptions exist. One grows tired of pre-fab salads, warmed-over McDonalds fare, and stale bagel-wiches - but the New Orleans airport humanely provides an outpost of the Praline Connection, Frenchman Street's soul-food emporium. It's not fine-dining, but the availability of real Southern food in the airport context is a wonderful thing.



Collard greens with Crystal hot sauce on top. Salty, meaty, pot-likker infused, finely cut. I really enjoy these greens. Even more so in the airport with a bunch of rubes eating Subway sandwiches sitting all around me. Should have grabbed some cornbread to crumble up in these but you can't have it all.



File gumbo. The lady asked me if I wanted a gumbo crab. Oh hell yes, woman, I want me a gumbo crab, perhaps two or three. I messily devoured the gumbo crabs in the dining area, after taking roughly half a roll of paper towels with me: I may or may not have used pretty much all of them. I like the Connection's gumbo because it is funky and because it has Stuff in it, much of it difficult to identify. There's usually bone-in chicken, sausage, shrimp, and meat-bits in this particular gumbo. Zap it with some Crystal and you're good to go. I can think of few better calorie sources prior to a cross-country flight to somewhere far away from good New Orleans food.

New Station Chinese Food

New Station
1800 Broadway
Sacramento, CA 95818
(916) 446-6688

New Station is one of Broadway's Divey Ethnic Places, a restaurant genre near and dear to my heart, perhaps nearest-and-dearest. A tiny and bare-bones Chinese restaurant with late-nite hours and a long, odd menu, it's one of my favorite options when you just want some damn Chinese food sans pretension, preferably at a late hour. There's seafood tanks if you want the fresh stuff, hot-pot dishes, a nice selection of Chinese veg dishes and all the other accoutrement of authentic Chinese food. By no means fine dining, but hits the spot. It's in a bit of a rough area. Don't leave valuable stuff in the car.


Gigantic bowl of hot and sour soup. They do a pretty nice one here: lots of "stuff" in it, a good combination of vinegar and meaty flavors, not too gloppy or padded out with cornstarch.


Seafood in X.O sauce on a bed of bok-choy. X.O sauce is the chopped dried-seafood sauce developed as a luxury item in 1980's Hong Kong- it is named after the expensive cognac brand. I like the salty umami flavor of it and order it often. This was pretty good, though I would have preferred more scallops and shrimp and less squid-bits.


Chili shrimp - meh. We obviously wandered by accident onto the American-style Chinese food portion of the menu with this one. Ketchupy and sweet sauce with jalapenos and some canned Chinese water chestnuts, as well as some slightly fried and beheaded shrimp. Skip it.


Pea-greens. These delicate spinach like guys are fantastic when cooked in a light garlic sauce. A nice rendition. They contritely told us they "only had the big ones" but they served me just fine.

New Station is a nice, quick choice for real Chinese food on Broadway - and a small and intimate departure from the nuttiness of New Canton on a busy night. FIsh around the menu and pick the stuff that looks interesting, and you'll have a late-night meal for not a heck of a lot of money.

Just don't make eye-contact with the homeless guys outside. They don't like that.

Trout with Cornbread Stuffing: Simple Fresh Southern

I picked up the Lee Brothers new Simple Fresh Southern at the Crescent City Farmer's Market a few weeks back. It's a fantastic find, and I'm not even being paid to shill for it. The updated produce-oriented Southern dishes are delicious, easy to toss together, and interesting - I've been playing around with it for a few weeks and haven't encountered a bummer dish yet. I'll be posting a few dishes from the book over the next few weeks with some marginally pithy commentary. Nice guys. Get the book.

My dad had invited company over, and I decided I'd take a (minor) risk and sample one of the recipes from the book. Pan fried trout with herb stuffing? Why not? A couple of attractive head-on rainbow fillets from Whole Foods and I was in business.



I floured the trout fillets a little, then cooked them in a combination of butter and olive oil. Mostly butter. Rainbow trout calls out for butter in large quantities, and you'd be a fool to deny its siren song. About two to three minutes on each side should be adequate for your needs. Respect thy fish.



The recipe calls for stuffing made from plain old bread: I chose cornbread. Cornbread is both more Southern and, in my estimation, infinitely more delicious. (This too is probably part and parcel of some unheralded genetic memory). I toasted the cornbread chunks in the oven until they were crispy, then tossed them with dill, chives, mint, and a little thyme. I would suggest adding the lemon and the olive oil about five minutes before serving to allow for a little - not too much - saturation.



I made the book's skillet-toasted green beans with orange as well.

You'll need:

1 large navel orange
2 teaspoons canola oil
1 pound green beans, ends trimmed
4 teaspoons kosher salt, plus more to taste
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar, champagne vinegar, or rice vinegar
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
Freshly ground black pepper


Grate the orange zest and keep it aside, then segment the orange and keep the sections (and juice) in the same bowl. Put in the vinegar, olive oil, and the salt, then keep it aside. This would be your vinaigrette.

Get a cast-iron skillet or a saute pan, then heat the oil. I used olive instead of canola. Toss in the beans and scatter a 1/2 teaspoon of salt over them. Cook them for about eight minutes, without a lot of stirring: you want them to get a little blackened and crispy. Once finished, toss them in a bowl, then throw in the reserved orange segments. You can also toss in a few orange segments during cooking if you'd like - I do. Put the dressing over the beans, then serve. Yum.

I even went to the trouble of fancy-cutting the oranges to eliminate the peel and pith as the Lee Brothers advise, which added a fresh and rather jewel-like texture to the completed dish. As a lover of Chinese food, I've always found that charring green beans just a little brings out the flavor: this dish keys into that revelation. I think the inclusion of just a tiny bit of garlic certainly wouldn't harm matters.



My dad's friend, a wine merchant, kindly brought over a few nice bottles. Which you can see here. The Shane syrah was a smoky-ass red wine and would be swell with a BBQ meal.

A great recipe and a very tasty dish. This one is a keeper. Going to be trying some more stuff from the book soon.

New Canton: Sunday Dim Sum, Human Existence is Secured

New Canton Restaurant
2523 Broadway
Sacramento, CA 95818-2658
(916) 739-8888

Dim Sum on Sunday's is delightful, something natural. I remember going for dim-sum when I was 8 years old or so in Atlanta: there were cart-ladies, shrimp toasts with sesame seeds stuck to them, big squashy pork-buns, spareribs, on and on. The dining hall functioned at a volume normally restricted to air-force bases, and it was huge, at least to my underexperienced eyes. I have enjoyed dim-sum ever since. I've had it in one of the soul-centers for the stuff - Hong Kong - and was delighted to find the Sunday dim sum tradition is not particularly dissimilar from place to place. (There was nearly a riot over chicken buns at the joint in Hong Kong, of course... "They're from the country, they don't know better," our table mate informed us with a derisive wave - but riots are not a neccessity for dim sum enjoyment, not at all.)

New Canton is one of Sacramento's few dim sum outlets, and it does a pretty good job. There are the requesite carts, the crowds of loud shouting people, the fresh-fish tank, the jellyfish salad and steamed chicken feet and thousand-year-egg congee. Roast pork and duck are of course available for the masses.


Chicken feet, always about the goddamned chicken feet (fung zau).. They're pretty good here: large, flavorful, dipped in sauce. They are a total bitch to pick up with chopsticks, but one learns the technique eventually. You may recall the recent news story regarding the Chinese indignation that we might curtail their chicken-foot supply: American chickens have such "big, fat" feet.



Minced scallops in a fried dumpling. Pretty good, and thankfully served warm enough. Chilled fried stuff that's been circumnavigating around on carts for the past hour is never good.


Shrimp dumplings or har gau, a perennial favorite. Quite good here. They're one of those things that no one dreams about but are unavoidable in practice.


Seaweed salad and some sort of glutinous thing flavored with sesame I cannot identify. I happen to deeply enjoy glutinous things flavored with sesame, so this was a hit for me. Nice to have something chilled to go with the other dishes.


Fried salt and pepper shrimp (椒鹽蝦) head-on, the way God made em'. Very nice, and hot enough - don't bother if they are not piping hot. If you don't eat the heads, you're missing out on a delicious, fatty treat. Same principle as suckin' crawdad heads.


Fried dumplings with crab inside and an extremely crispy interior. Pretty good, though skip the sweet n' sour sauce, there ain't no excuse for that.


Spareribs with black bean sauce (pai gwhut). Bony, fatty, oh-so-comforting. Can't have dim sum without em'.


Char siu, or BBQ pork. New Canton does very good BBQ pork and duck - it's one of their specialities -and this was no exception, with a nice smoky flavor and a carefully balanced ratio of fat to meat.

Serve all this with copious amounts of tea, and all is right with the world. We found that going at noon beats the AM rush - a good idea if you're not interested in fighting to be heard over a sea of excited Cantonese conversation. On the other hand, sometime you are.

Desire Oyster Bar: What Did You Do To Them Innocent Bivalves

Desire Oyster Bar
300 Bourbon St
New Orleans, LA 70130
(504) 586-0300


There are roughly a zillion oyster bars on Bourbon Street, and everyone finds themself slipping into a relationship with a favorite. For me, it is Felix's. The non-oyster related food is terrible and I cannot recall the last time I have ever sat down, but the price is right, the shuckers are convivial, and I can knock a shot of Jager and a dozen raw in relative peace and harmony. These things are important in life, these are what keep me animated and going forward.

Anyhow, I decided to give Desire a shot because I am making a concentrated effort to try as many restaurants as possibly in New Orleans, even when every particle of my being just wants to slip into a relationship with a place and stop my wild-catting around, to extend a metaphor to an uncomfortable degree. So, Desire. It is located within the Royal Sonesta Hotel and is fairly nice inside, with an old-fashioned tile decor and a display of fresh fruit and veg that probably is not actually used in anything. The place does a cracking business via an endless stream of tourists. Watch out on Saturday.



A dozen raw. Yuck. These were not good oysters, and I sort of considered not eating them: a bad oyster is not just a culinary disappointment but potentially deadly, and I didn't need that kind of cramp in my stye. These were undersized and slightly warm. Also, they make your horseradish sauce for you, with enough horseradish to actually kill a horse. As half my enjoyment of oysters stems from producing my own horseradish sauce concotion/debating with my dining companions about merits of said horseradish sauce - this was quite a depressing experience. I have to stop writing about this now or I may begin to cry. I did not get sick from these. Just FYI.



Turtle soup. Okay. Lots of sherry flavor, lots of turtle-meat pieces. Not Commanders Palace status but acceptable enough with some crackers crumbled innit. Very boozy. I would like to see an industrial turtle farm someday. Just for kicks.

We also had boiled shrimp, which I did not photograph. (To use shrimp in the singular form is ugly and I don't like it when you do it). Merely okay. I prefer these suckers with the heads on. Some of us derive a great amount of pleasure from the head, uh, butter. Admittedly this is highly antisocial behavior if one is not eating somewhere in Guangzhou but I do not let that stop me, ever. This could explain my love life. I would, to summarize, eat the shrimp again but only if I had nothing else available. Such as something cooked in Guangzhou.


The Desire Oyster bar warrants a large "bleh," especially because an oyster bar serving mediocre and lukewarm oysters is simply inexcusable. If one does not have a truly superior oyster hookup, one should revise one's business plan. Extensively. Their menu of various other New Orleans specialities may be acceptable, but I doubt I will bother to return anytime soon.

The Crescent City Farmers Market, The Lee Brothers, and Other Concerns

The Lee Brothers came to the Crescent City Farmer's Market a couple of weeks ago, selling signed copies of their new cookbook, Simple Fresh Southern. They're truly delightful guys, and we had a nice conversation about the joys of okra - I need to try eating it raw on really hot summer days. A true Southern cook can talk about okra for a very, very long time. I mean, good lord, lookit how wholesome and friendly they look. How the heck could you not buy their cookbook? They sure roped me in.

As for the book? Total keeper. I cooked it from a bunch during the week of Thanksgiving and will be posting pictures soon. It's a great varation on their first cookbook, which was, as you may remember, a delicious but very heavy-dish oriened treatise on Southern cuisine. The recipes in this book are much more focused on uber-fresh ingredients and recipes that can be slapped together in about an hour or so: great to have around when you're sick of cooking the same goddamn thing over and over and over.



We had a few other doings at the Market. Gabrielle at the Uptowner owner and local chef Greg Sonnier gave away samples of his gumbo, in an effort to support his ailing friend, Ray Brandhurst. The gumbo was perhaps the best damn stuff I'd ever had. I tracked him down and asked whatever he'd done to it to make it so good, and he filled me in.

The trick? A whole smoked turkey. He made stock out of the carcass and used the dark meat in the gumbo (along with the usual seafood and sausage suspects), producing a smoky, earthy, down n' dirty flavor. It tasted exactly like BBQ gumbo, with an alluring smokehouse flavor. The other trick? Sonnier does his roux in the oven. Sounds obscene, but judging from this gumbo, it's a fantastic idea. Hopefully my dad and I can get some turkey parts, fire up the smoker, and try to replicate this over the holidays. It's too good to let it pass me by.




Gorgeous winter greens. Collards, kale, Asian greens, mustard greens, you name it, they got it. Along with scallions, broccoli, and other delights.




Blue crabs, always a beloved staple around here. These folks bring them in live and put the disgruntled little beasts into crates during market-time. This would be the view inside one of the aforementioned crates.