the legion of the purple teeth

I have a thing for these wheels of soft, rather bland French cheeses in the wedge-shaped packaging. Maybe it’s just the little wedges I like; there’s also the round Baby Bell cheeses for which you pull the red string to remove the casing – eh, not so into those. I picked up this cheese at Super King Market. If you live in the 90065, you might be familiar with this dangerously-packed ethnic grocery store on San Fernando near the 2 freeway. It carries extremely low-priced produce with some oddities interspersed (recent nabs: oyster mushrooms, green almonds, sunchokes) and all kinds of Middle Eastern food products, including some from countries I’m not even sure we’re supposed to trade with (like SYRIA.) The emphasis does seem to be on Persian and Armenian foods, so when I saw this French cow face, it jumped out at me. It’s nothing super special. It’s a young cheese with a tiny bit of tang, good to smear on a salty sunflower-seed covered cracker. I paired this very nibble with some of the $2 Chardonnay you can buy at Fresh & Easy, the Big Kahuna. Entire snack + wine pairing = less than $10. Vive Le France.

This Sunday, the BF made a request for a healthy dinner. He knows if he left it up to me, we’d be eating something fried in butter, drenched in cream, followed by a cheese course and a dessert course. I would also act like I forgot about the existence of vegetables. This is another recipe learned from my last class at Hipcooks…

In class we did it with oyster mushrooms that looked fresh. I had to make due with dried shitake mushrooms from Mitsuwa market down on Alameda in Little Toyko, soaked in hot water to bring them back to life. I sauteed them up with some olive oil, freshly squeezed lemon juice, and 3 cloves of chopped up garlic, added in a handful or 3 of roasted pine nuts (a Tony favorite), then indelicately shoved the messy mix into a big pocket cut into the salmon filets. You can’t see the stuffing here because I purposely hid it from you! Haw! Wrapped the puppy in rice paper and then sauteed it until the wrapper was crispy and brown. Guzzled it with this:

We had a slight misfire with the wine sitch for dinner. I had a bottle of Rose from 05 waiting in the fridge and it looks like it had gone bad – it was too dark for Rose, and kind of had a vinegar nose. So I tried my second best option, a bottle of Pinot I had hiding away in the cellar. At least now I have confirmation that I can start opening all the 2004 Santa Barbara pinots. After popping the cork, the smell of fresh, fruity BERRY notes flooded our noses – strawberries and cherries – smooth tannins – rich and elegant, not flabby and flat. Snooty wine jerks are always talking about pinot with salmon, and now I get it. Something about the oil in the fish and the bright lively fruit in the pinot just goes damn well together.

More about this bottle – Longoria Wines

A few months ago I started taking classes at Hipcooks in the Brewery art colony. It was part of a general order from the head shrinker that I both put myself in the position of student or newbie to someone else’s experience *and* do something outside of my comfort level. Before that first cooking class, I was more of a Food Network passive junkie who bought cookware and chef’s gadgets and just let them pile up in my space-cramped kitchen. Perhaps it was that joke on SNL in the There Will Be Blood skit when the narrator says “Food Network – porn for fat people” that also helped me get off my butt and start using all my kitchen junk. If Crate and Barrel insists on being irresistible to me on paycheck Fridays, I better put it all to good use. And if I’m gonna do all this damn cooking and wine guzzling, I better blog about it too, eh? So here’s part one in a series about ‘not being a lazy fat-ass who just watches bobble-headed people making food whilst eating Doritos’.

Here’s my latest effort. The recipe is from the last Hipcooks class I took, “Healthy, Fresh and Zingy 3″ – a goat cheese tart.

I was slightly intimidated to give this a shot because of the crust making. Who the hell wants to take the time to make a crust? Crust making sounds like something John McCain does naturally, in his sleep! And to top off my general paranoia, in class when this was demo-ed to us, our instructor whipped out a pre-made crust, par-baked and light golden so we never actually saw the labor involved in person. But like most things in life, if you just follow the damn instructions you’re going to be okay! So for once, instead of being impatient, I really let the dough sit for an hour in the fridge as instructed! I rolled it out between plastic wrap as instructed! Wow, so this is how baking works! My only major screw up was not having enough flour and using whole wheat flour as a substitute. Despite this tweak, I think it came out pretty damn good. My major proof in support of its damn goodness is the fact that I baked this on Saturday and come Monday morning, exactly one quarter of it was left. Yes, we ate it all. It’s like a fancy pants cheesecake – half goat cheese, half cream cheese, spiked with lemon zest both in the crust and in the filling, and topped with slivered almonds. We did not pare it with any specific beverage, although damn. I bet it would be good with cool, crisp proseccoto cut that creaminess, but not too acidic to kill its light citrusy, vanilla subtleties. Mmmm, **Homer voice** citrusy, vanilla subtleties…

The BF took me to Canele in Atwater Villlage for the 31st birthday. The first awesome decision made was bringing this wine with us. Both of us had the beef tenderloin entry and this syrah from Santa Barbara made the entree a total home run. This great food wine is not too tannic, not too peppery, and also went really well with our appetizer – serrano ham, olives, and idiazabal:

The only thing is – olives do NOT go with wine, yet here I am, chomping away on salty, oily, delicious olives. That’s what your water glass is for, I guess.

Here’s our other app, perfectly steamed asparagus sitting on a super buttery piece of crispy bread, topped with a soft boiled egg. Everything drizzled in brown butter. I could eat this for breakfast EVERY DAY:

A few other random notes:
You sit close, VERY close to your neighbors, so either get over it or prepare your conversations ahead of time to be as inoffensive as possible. Corkage is a reasonable $10. None of the desserts sang to me but I had a tough time choosing between the beef tenderloin and the beef bourginon.

Verdict:
I would definitely go back for another dinner but what I am even more curious about is their weekend brunches! Who wants to come with me?

Canele in Atwater Village

This is the Brioche with Proscuitto, Gruyere and Egg at A.O.C. As of this writing, it is the best thing I have eaten all year (sorry Mozza Pizzeria). I would eat this every day without fail or fear for my arteries if I could.

As everyone and their dairy-lovin’ friends already know, A.O.C. is also an excellent restaurant for wine and cheese lovers. This is our beautiful cheese plate, with a cheddar from England, a sharp and stinky blue from Spain, and a creamy goat from the Loire Valley. The cheddar was my favorite, crumbly and not too tangy. This cheddar has ruined me now, nothing will ever seem as addictive. And guess what it’s called, Mrs. Appleby’s New Cheshire! Mrs. Appleby, wherever you are, I salute you!

After drooling all over the cheese menu selections, you will be presented with a nice selection of whites and reds by the glass, by the carafe, and of course, by the almighty bottle. We went with a carafe of Flowers’ super juicy and compelling Pinot/Syrah blend, the Perennial. It sounds lame to say so, but it really had the best of both varietals – it was both supple and elegant, smooth and plummy, bespeaking a Pinot, but it still had a little Syrah spice to give it personality. I will certainly seek this interesting blend out again, and keep an eye on this Napa vintner in general…


Final Verdict: A day or two later and I’m still thinking about my meal at A.O.C.

I live, and so does my liver!

I was inspired to return to my wee wine blog after reading about my favorite wine duo, Jenn & John Nugent of Colorado Wine Company, in the LA Times this week. And how kickass is Jenn’s quote?

“We found a surprising gap in the market for the kind of store where we wanted to shop, a place where no one is ever made to feel stupid.”

I have spent so many happy, buzzed evenings ensconsed in their wine bar, so I’m glad to see them and their refreshing egalitarian approach to wine getting more excellent PR. In fact, the bottle shown here was bought at the Colorado Wine Company on their recommendation. This is not a wussy wine for your wussy wuss friends who love pinot grigio (and also pan flutes). It is a sparkling red, with an appealing rich dark brick color, and a zingy perky acidity. That tartness would go so well with a nice tray of charcuterie. You know, some hunks of Italian salame. Or slices of sopressata. Ooh, is that grana padano? I’ll just make myself a little plate if you don’t mind… oh my, I drifted off there to a wine tasting in my imagination.

Don’t feel pressured to finish it off in one sitting because it’s fizzy and you’re living hard and you have no place to go tomorrow morning. Get yourself one of these Metrokane bottle sealers for bubblies (mine came with my Rabbit opener), and pop it back in the fridge. On day 2, I had it with some Quercia speck I picked up from Whole Foods and it held up just fine. No crackers, no cheese, just a few slices of buttery rich smoked pork and some tart Lambrusco. I’ll gladly get another bottle of this special treat, and have it with hearty grilled chicken sausages. Meat + wine = heaven. Sorry, my vegetarian amigos. This post was more about meats and meat enjoyment than what it should have been about. I promise to write about brussell sprouts…someday.

Other Random Information:
70% Lambrusco, 30% Ancellotta, produced & bottled by Negri’s Wine, San Giorgio, Italy.

An aside – I bought the La Quecia speck almost totally because I read all about their humane & organic business philosophy on an info sheet on the Whole Foods deli counter. Also, the book with the bottle is called Movie Thrillers, which Tony found for me in a thrift store.

I forgot to take notes on this wine because I was too damn busy enjoying it. Professionalism always!

Anyhow, Inland Empirical and I managed to squeeze our hungry arses into this month’s Auntie Em’s popular Farmer’s Market Dinners. When Jody, Auntie Em’s excellent fromager saw that our wine was from Healdsburg, she immediately cracked open some Pug’s Leap goat cheese, also from the area. It was an excellent match, and it didn’t hurt that the cheese was damn near perfect, runny, ripe and creamy (see here). Dinner was excellent! I went with the Braised Lamb Shank even though I’m usually shank-phobic, but I tore it apart with a carnivore’s delight.

I, uh, promise to take notes next time. Sometimes you just want to drink something, you know? The wine developed as the night went on and had developed such a lush spicy nose by the end. I would definitely re-guzzle it.

(In the writing of this post, I had to look up what the cheese world equivalent of a sommelier was, and stumbled upon this excellent blog.)