Second Taste

Tags

Reality TV, Wine

After last week’s post on my new reality competition discovery, The Taste, I was contacted by someone affiliated with Alamos Wines who graciously provided me with Gregg’s winning recipe to share with all of you (see below). I’m not sure I’ll be able to make it in an hour as Gregg did, nor when I might have smoked eel and bonito flakes on hand to do so, but it certainly looks like it is worth the effort. If you make it, I want a full report!

This week, Gregg again won the team challenge and everyone seems to be gunning for him; however, he showed his first sign of weakness by ending up on the bottom of the solo challenge. Of course, by winning the team challenge, he had immunity and was automatically safe from elimination. We will have to wait until next week to see if his disappointing result shakes Ludo’s confidence in him.

Tensions definitely seemed higher in every kitchen this week, and the deceptively simple theme of sandwiches proved to be the undoing of more than one top contender. However, at the end of the day, the right people seem to have been sent packing. The team I suspected to be the weakest coming out of the auditions is indeed turning out to be much weaker than the other three, but we are slowly approaching the point where I don’t see who could possibly be sent home next.

Tune in next week for an offal good time!

Five Spice Crusted Short Rib with Eggplant and Miso Black Garlic Jus
Paired with Alamos® Malbec
Recipe by Chef Gregg Drusinsky

Eggplant:
2 small eggplants
2 tablespoons sesame oil
Salt to taste

Miso Jus:
10 small shallots, sliced
4 cloves garlic, sliced
1 tablespoon canola oil
1 cup sake
3 cups chicken stock
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 cluster maitake mushrooms
4 oz. smoked eel
2 tablespoons white miso paste
1 head black garlic, sliced

Short ribs:
1 lb. boneless beef short ribs
2 teaspoons five spice powder
2 teaspoons smoked salt
3 tablespoons grape seed oil

Garnish:
2 teaspoons ground bonito flakes
6 green onions, white end sliced, green tops cut in chiffonnade
½ bunch cilantro, small leaves picked

Method:
Char the whole eggplants over a flame until black and soft. Scoop out the insides from the skin and pulse in a blender with sesame oil; season with salt.

To prepare jus, sauté shallots and garlic in canola oil in a large saucepan until soft and aromatic. Add sake and reduce by half. Add chicken stock, soy sauce and mushrooms and cook for 20 minutes. Reduce heat and add eel; simmer for 10 minutes more. Pour mixture through a fine strainer to remove solids. Place miso and black garlic in a blender. Slowly add the mushroom broth, blending until smooth.

To prepare short ribs, season meat with five spice powder and smoked salt. Heat oil in a medium skillet over high heat. Sear meat on all sides; reduce heat and cook until medium rare. Set aside for 5 minutes then thinly slice.

To plate, arrange sliced short ribs over eggplant puree then drizzle jus around short ribs. Garnish with bonito flakes, scallions and cilantro. Serves 4-6.

The Taste

Tags

Reality TV, Wine

If you at all like cooking competitions, I highly recommend The Taste. There have only been two episodes of actual competition, so feel free to pick it up even now, you haven’t missed anything by not seeing the auditions.

The basic premise is that there are four mentors who choose teams whose members compete each week by creating one perfect bite for the judges to taste. The mentors are Ludovic Lefebvre, Nigella Lawson, Brian Malarkey, and Anthony Bourdain. There are both home cooks and professionals among the contestants.

Similar to The Voice, this show’s audition process is blind. Unlike The Voice, where the auditions are probably my favorite part of the show, here, I don’t think they worked so well. Since the mentors didn’t reveal their yes/no choice until after having given commentary, it was a little awkward waiting for the reveal. This awkwardness was compounded by the fact that very few contestants were fought over. No one was selected by more than two mentors, and only five had any overlap at all: Paul and Huda, who were selected by both Ludo and Nigella, and Sarah, Shawn, and Gregg, who were selected by Ludo and Malarkey. Except for Huda, Ludo was the mentor chosen by all of these contestants.

I guess taste really is individual (a fact that seems to be borne out in the first few episodes).

The final teams coming out of the audition rounds were:

Ludo: Gregg, Paul, Sarah, Shawn
Nigella: Erika, Huda, Lauren, Renatta
Malarkey: Adam, Jeff, Khristianne, Micah
Tony: Diane, Mia, Ninamarie, Uno

Each episode of the competition is split into two parts, the Team Taste Test and the Solo Taste Test.

In the first part of each episode, the Team Taste Test, each team member creates a dish based on the theme of the week. The mentor is in the kitchen with the contestants giving advice. The team members then taste each dish and the mentor selects one spoon to present to the guest judge; if that team’s spoon is selected as the winner, the person who made it gets immunity in the elimination challenge. The winning team also earns the mentorship of the guest judge during the second round.

In the Solo Taste Test, contestants again cook individually, but without their mentor, preparing four spoonfuls of one dish for the judges to taste. This test is also blind, with all the mentors tasting each contestant’s spoon without knowing who cooked it. However, the contestants are on a balcony behind the judges and can hear what they say as they taste.

After the tasting, each mentor/judge chooses his or her top and bottom pick from among all the spoons. This is where it gets very interesting, as mentors may pick one of their own for elimination without realizing it (which has already happened at least once). So, while there could be up to eight contestants in front of the judges at the end, any one contestant might receive one or more votes, including the contestant with immunity. We don’t see who the judges have chosen until the contestants come up in unmarked “hatches” and each judge presses a button to see their choices revealed. That moment is the money shot.

In the first week, there were seven people in the hatches, as one person got two “best” votes. In the second week, there were only six, with two people getting two “best” votes. So far, two contestants have been sent home each week, which seems a bit quick; I hope it will be just one per week now that we are already down to twelve contestants.

The challenges are not crazy. Just basic themes, so contestants have a focus but are relatively free to do what they do best. In the first week, the theme was comfort food and the contestants needed to use either bacon, eggs, or cheese in the Team Taste Test. Gabrielle Hamilton, chef-owner of Prune, was the guest judge. In the Solo round, the contestants could make anything they felt was comfort food. In the second episode, the theme was wine pairing. First, contestants had to create a bite to go with an Alamos Malbec. David Kinch, chef-owner of Manresa, and André Mack, sommelier extraordinaire, were judges. Then, contestants had to choose one wine, either an Italian Barolo, a California Chardonnay, a French Côtes du Rhône, or a German Riesling, and make a dish to pair with it.

So far, favorite contestants are Sarah, the only home cook on Team Ludo, Khristianne, the former personal chef to Charlie Sheen on team Malarkey, and Mia and Uno from Team Anthony. My least favorite contestant is definitely Gregg on Team Ludo; he was a saucier at Le Bernadin and acts like it. Mostly, I’m really enjoying the competitive spirit (and yet obvious rapport) between the mentors.

The Taste airs on Tuesdays at 8pm on ABC and is also available on Hulu Plus.

Landing the White Whale: Napa and the California Dream

Tags

California, Restaurants, Wine

The second day after I moved to San Francisco, La Belle Chantal* called up and asked if I wanted to drive up to Sonoma. Well, who wouldn’t? So, off we went and had a fun-filled day of trains for the kids and wine for the adults. At the time, I thought that that’s what my life here in California was going to be like—fabulous restaurants in the city, weekends off in wine country, swimming pools, movie stars—you know the drill. But then I woke up and realized I still had lots of debt from graduate school and worked in publishing, so maybe I’d have to settle for fabulous burritos and cable cars. Eh, there are worse things.

Fast forward more than four years, and, while I’ve been very privileged to have seen lots of my new home state, including multiple trips down the coast, four of its eight National Parks, and fourteen of the twenty-one missions on the Mission Trail, I had never been to Napa. Which, as many people have pointed out to me, is just a little crazy, especially given that I have been wine tasting in both Paso Robles and Santa Barbara—twice. Anyway, La Belle Chantal once again stepped up to the plate and suggested celebrating my birthday in Napa. Again, who am I to refuse?

What a lovely day. I definitely need to do this more often.

We started out by taking the tram up to Sterling Vineyards in Calistoga, which is as lovely a setting for wine tasting as you can imagine. And, I actually preferred the cab, so another first for today—miracles do happen!

Looking out over Napa Valley from the terrace of Sterling Vineyards

We also checked out many overpriced goods at the Oxbow Public Market and on the streets of St. Helena. I resisted the temptation of $9 soap and managed to get out alive having only spent $2.80 on crushed vadouvan at the spice store. Score!

Despite eating too late a lunch at the Pica Pica Maize Kitchen in Napa (try the deviled ham), I still managed to put away a good part of a wood oven duck dinner at Cindy’s Backstreet Kitchen. The salad was as delicious as it looks; the sumac in the dressing was subtle, but gave it a distinctive zip. If this is her “casual” place, I certainly see why Cindy Pawlcyn made the Top Chef Masters cut.

Thank you, Chantal!


*La Belle Chantal is my former roommate from Paris and one of the reasons I fell in love with San Francisco (since her moving here allowed me to visit far more than is reasonable). She is many things, including belle, but her name is not actually Chantal.

How to Drink

Tags

Cocktails, Wine

As many of you know, I am always on the lookout for good cocktails, or, failing that, good books about making them. I posted last fall about Dale DeGroff’s The Essential Cocktail, which has served me well and should be on the shelf of everyone who is serious about their personal bar.

Right alongside should be Victoria Moore’s How to Drink.


I learned about this fabulous tome on Rowley’s Whiskey Forge—a blog for anyone who loves cooking, eating, and drinking (not necessarily in that order), or even just reading about said activities. I can’t do justice to his beautifully written review of this book, so I’ll just link to it here. Suffice it to say, How to Drink is extremely readable, while also providing plenty of recipes and essential information about brewing coffee and tea, choosing wine, and stocking your bar. Moore even has a section on making your own elderflower cordial!

After covering the basics, the book is organized by season, which takes me back to the days where you could tell what time of year it was by whether I was drinking a gin & tonic or a bourbon & ginger. Of course, now I live in San Francisco where seasonal drinking has less relevance, but that just means that practically every day is potentially a Pimm’s day. Lucky me.

La Ciccia

Tags

Restaurants, Wine

I don’t normally write about food here, but I had such an amazing dinner earlier this week, I just had to. La Ciccia is a Sardinian restaurant located on the edge of Noe Valley near Glen Park. It was recently featured in a New York Times article on San Francisco Italian restaurants, but I’ve wanted to try it since it was featured on Check, Please! Bay Area. Seeing everyone on that show praising the restaurant so highly, and having recently watched the Sardinia episode of Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations, where everything he ate looked so incredibly delicious, La Ciccia quickly moved to the top of my list of restaurants to try. However, it took me some time to get there since most of my restaurant budget these past few months has been devoted to pre- or post-theater excursions.

In any case, I finally went, and it was delicious. For antipasti, we started off with a plate of prosciutto, Sardinian flat bread, and an octopus stew in a spicy tomato sauce. Despite being in public, I couldn’t resist “saucing” my plate, as they say in France. (Yes, the French have a verb for soaking up the sauce on your plate with your bread, and, while acceptable at home, one shouldn’t do it in a restaurant.) For primi, we had two of Bourdain’s favorite dishes, Spaghittusu cun Allu Ollu e Bottariga (bottarga is a dried fish roe that is shaved over the fresh pasta) and Malloreddus a sa Campidanese (semolina gnochetti with a pork ragu). I think they’ve spoiled me for all other pastas; I would go back for either of those in a heartbeat. As a secondo, we shared the sea bream special. I’m not a huge fan of fish, but I really enjoyed this simple preparation. To finish, we shared the Truta de Arriscottu, a ricotta and saffron cake served with honey and almonds, a perfect dessert that wasn’t too sweet. To me, it had a taste very similar to madeleines, although no Proustian side effects. The wine suggested by our waiter (random side note: a gorgeous man from Milan), a lovely Cannonau, or Grenache, went perfectly with the food.

Heaven, absolute heaven.