Back to the Valley!

It's been several months since (a) I've written and (b) I've soaked up some California sunshine whilst enjoying some delicious wine. What better time to reinvigorate The Oakville Grade than on the eve of a trip back to the Valley?

Mrs. Oakville Grade and I are leaving tonight for a few days of hedonistic pleasures. We're considering this part two of our honeymoon and a final hurrah before she starts a new job and we have to live apart for three months. The Napa to-do list is long and we look forward to checking off each "task," from wineries and restaurants, to bicycling through the valley and visiting with friends. In the coming days we'll recap them all, hopefully with pictures galore.

Viva la Valley!

Breaking News: Top Chef Coming to D.C.!

According to a recent post on the Washington Post, the upcoming season of Top Chef will be filmed in Washington, D.C. The show is set to begin taping in the spring.

Check out the Post article here.

Food on TV: Coming Soon to a DVR Near You

There are two exciting upcoming food shows on television that I learned about today, both of which are making DVR at the new apartment look like a fantastic investment.

First, the return of Top Chef: Masters on Wednesday, April 7. In addition to a number of new "master" chefs, a few of Season 1's unsuccessful chefs will be returning for another chance. I am, of course, excited for the return of any form of Top Chef. But, I barely recognize any of these chefs except for prior appearances on Bravo or the Food Network, e.g. Wiley Dufresne, Marcus Samulesson. That's not necessarily a bad thing, however, as it could present a good opportunity to learn about a new generation of "masters" out there. Most importantly, though, it will be the effective greasy breakfast for the post-Top Chef hangover, rather than the ineffective cup of coffee that Shear Genius has been.

Second, a new show, Food Wars, premiers tonight on The Travel Channel at 10 p.m. The premise of the show is to settle debates between two rival food purveyors. The classic example would be the battle between the two iconic cheesesteak shops in Philadelphia: Geno's and Pat's. The score is "settled" by a blind taste test. The series starts with a doozy: Buffalo, N.Y. The battle is between Anchor Bar, the birthplace of the Buffalo Wing, and Duff's. As a newly converted buffalo wing fanatic, I'm looking forward to checking this one out. Of course, the series will do little "settling." Most likely it will just amount to additional promotional materials for the winning establishment and make the owners thankful that Camille Ford showed up on their doorstep rather than Bobby Flay for a throwdown.

The French Laundry, At Last

The rain had subsided earlier in the day, which meant that we were able to walk down Washington Street in Yountville without an umbrella or fear of getting splashed by the occasional passing car. It was an odd sensation to be nervous about going out to dinner. We clearly were, but uncertain why. We weren’t meeting each other’s parents for the first time or having dinner with an important boss or client. It was just the two of us.

But, we were finally going to The French Laundry. We had driven past it several times on the way to eat at one of Yountville’s other spectacular restaurants, but had never crossed its threshold. We had even seen Chef Keller walking around town a couple of times. And, most recently, after being awake for almost 20 hours straight, we had slept through a reservation on the day we got engaged. Now, there was nothing between us and dining at what the New York Times had once called the most exciting restaurant in America but about 100 yards and finding exactly where the front door was located.

Superlative words have been written about The French Laundry almost since the day that Thomas Keller took over its kitchen in 1994. I’m sure that I can’t add anything to this long list of laudatory reviews. Let’s just take it as given that the food was fantastic, the service was precise and professional, and the experience was exceptional.

Nevertheless there were still “wow” moments in the eighteen courses (nine each) we enjoyed over the three and a half hours we were at the restaurant. Although these are certainly worthy of mention, it was the overall experience of dining at the restaurant from the moment we entered the courtyard outside of the front door to hearing the door close behind us that has stuck with me. With the exception of trying to figure out how to use the foie gras accoutrements – triangular pillows of toasted brioche and three types of coarse grained salt – it was a comfortable and relaxed experience uncommon in such fine-dining atmospheres.

Enough chatter. What about the food?

The meal got off to a perfect start with two of the Laundry’s signature dishes: salmon cornets and “Oysters and Pearls.” For my vegetarian partner, the salmon cornet was modified into an artichoke “tartare” cornet. The artichoke was so finely chopped that it looked like shaved ice.

These two dishes are perfect examples of Keller’s approach in the kitchen: witty, evocative, and precise. The inspiration for the salmon cornets, which look like little ice cream cones with a scoop of glistening pink sorbet, was, allegedly, a late-night visit to an ice cream shop. With this dish the wit is clear, the dish is visually evocative of something familiar and fun, and the flavors are harmonious. “Oysters and Pearls” are playful more in name than in visual presentation. Resting on a bed of tapioca pearls, two briney and delicate oysters arrive with a generous dollop of salty, savory caviar.

These were the two dishes I knew I would eat – they never leave the menu – but, somehow, they still managed to surprise me because of how bloody good they were. They were my two favorite dishes of the meal.

In his four-star review of Keller’s New York City flagship restaurant Per Se, New York Times critic Frank Bruni said that the meal that solidified the fourth star was the vegetarian tasting menu. Both Per Se and The French Laundry have two nine-course offerings per night: the Chef’s Tasting Menu and a “Tasting of Vegetables.”

(The French Laundry Garden, directly across the street from the restaurant.)

My fiancée ordered the Tasting of Vegetables and two of the courses were vegetables she doesn’t like: eggplant and mushrooms. But, as an example of the kitchen’s skill, these ended up being two of her favorite dishes. The eggplant was a particular standout. Cooked sous-vide, the Japanese eggplant had a fleshy look and texture. Paired with Madras curry, cauliflower, and chickpeas the dish was a standout and a surprising taste of India in the beginning of the meal.

Having checked the daily menu religiously for the month leading up to our reservation, I had noticed that a roasted hen-of-the-woods mushroom dish had become popular on the menu. Given my fiancee’s aversion to mushrooms, I was worried that she might not like it. I should have had more confidence in The French Laundry kitchen. Like the eggplant, it was a standout dish that had a wonderful, rich earthy flavor that was perfect for a winter’s night.

There were two low points early in our meals and for similar reasons. (“Low,” of course, is entirely relative in the context of this otherwise amazing meal.) For me, it was my tuna tartare dish (three of nine?), and for my fiancée it was her beet salad (course two of nine). Both were minimal to the point of barely being noticeable in caloric intake and it seemed like the kitchen spent more time on visual appeal than on flavor composition.

Keller is a fan of the “composed” cheese course. In other words, a cheese course that looks like a real dish with cheese as the star, rather than simply a hunk of cheese with some bread, marmalade, and nuts. This approach is fantastic because it pairs untraditional accoutrements with a certain cheese. My cheese course – “Manchester” – (the menu’s excessive use of quotation marks remains a mystery), for example, played off the now omnipresent beet and goat cheese pairing, but with some added highlights. Most notably, the addition of light, fresh brussels sprouts leaves – just the leaves – was a perfect counterpoint to the richness and earthiness of this combination.What was on the plate did taste good, but I realized a new pet peeve. I don’t like it when chefs force you to compose your own bite. Take my tuna tartare as an example. The hearts of palm, perfect pink cubes of bluefin tuna, and ginger were scattered around the flat white plate like individual Lego blocks on the floor waiting to be put together. Considering the diversity and sparse amount of ingredients, I wasn’t sure how to compose a bite of food. Each individual ingredient was, of course, delicious, but it was near impossible to get a sense of how they were intended to fit together.

We could tell that the meal was starting to wind down as soon as our cheese course arrived. It is difficult to break up with someone after building up a relationship over six unforgettable courses, but the final three courses let us down easy.

A few minutes after our empty cheese plates were whisked away, the sorbet course arrived. Sorbet is rarely elevated to sensational heights. The course, after all, is mainly a functional one. And, although both of our dishes were delicious, what was most impressive about them was that the same high standards were clearly applied to this course as the butter-poached lobster tail. Flavored frozen water was given the same respect as a pricey, luxurious piece of seafood.

Finally, dessert. Our two desserts were an “Opera Cake” and a Peanut Butter “Bavarois.” (I told you about those quotation marks.) A traditional opera cake is France’s answer to tiramisu, but without the hacking-cough-inducing cocoa powder. The Laundry’s version didn’t use sponge cake, but did have a thin layer of chocolate ganache formed into a tube filled with a praline cream like a cannoli. The most intriguing element of the dessert, however, was a milk granité.

But, the Peanut Butter “Bavarois” was our favorite of the two. It was a rich a peanut butter Bavarian cream with milk chocolate “whip” on a light, crispy crust (a “feuilletine”). This was paired with a banana sorbet that perfectly captured the flavor of the fruit and had an amazingly smooth texture. It’s not that there was anything wrong with the Opera Cake to make us like it less, it’s just that the peanut butter and chocolate combination is always a winner. And, when prepared by The French Laundry it is even that much better.

In addition to a menu that can make one’s mouth water, The French Laundry also has an encyclopedic wine list that would pique even an experienced wine collector’s curiosity. It is also really, really expensive. The Laundry has, by far, the highest wine mark-ups in the Valley. One reason for this is that service is included in the price of the bottle. However, taking my housemate’s recommendation we decided on a strategy to avoid the high prices.

We planned to suck it up and pay the $50 corkage fee for our bottle of red, order a half bottle of white for the early courses, and have a glass of sparkling as an apertif. It ended up working perfectly. Like many restaurants that serve long, multi-course dinners, the Laundry has a great selection of half-bottles, which allows diners to try a number of different wines as the meal progresses. We selected a half-bottle of chardonnay from Burgundy, France. In particular, we selected a bottle from the Meursault area, which traditionally make some of the richest chardonnays in Burgundy. It paired well with many of the decadent flavors and ingredients in the meal, such as my foie gras and my fiancee’s turnip soup.

Keller’s goal for each dish is to serve just enough food that the diner wants one more bite of food at the end of the course. After nine courses, this adds up to enough food to be almost perfectly sated without being stuffed. As we were walking out the door, I found myself wanting one more bite of food, one more sip of wine, and just to stay a little longer.

Super Bowl Wings: Homemade Hot Sauce, Batch #00 Makes its Debut

I was looking forward to Super Bowl Sunday not only because it promised to be a great match-up, but also because I had been itching to use my homemade hot sauce on a batch of Super Bowl wings.

I did not know this before I started making wings this past NFL season, but the “original” Buffalo Wing Sauce recipe is simply a 50-50 mixture of melted butter and Frank’s Red Hot Sauce. Since I am not a very big fan of butter, I decided to try a 67-33 mixture of my homemade hot sauce and butter.

However, I was watching this Super Bowl in the Napa Valley and simply adding melted butter to hot sauce didn’t seem like much of a culinary challenge. Instead, I decided to make a slightly different version of the beurre blanc sauce from my earlier salmon and leek recipe.

I followed the same basic instructions from the Bouchon Cookbook, but with two alterations. First, I added some finely chopped garlic to the shallot-wine-vinegar base, because my favorite wing sauces typically have a nice garlicky flavor. Second, I did not add cream to the reduction before melting butter into the sauce. I wanted to stay as “traditional” as possible and retain the original hot sauce-butter recipe.

(Beurre blanc base with lots of chopped garlic)

("Butter, butter! Give me butter! Always butter!" - F. Point)

(Fresh beurre blanc!)

With the two key elements of the sauce completed, I turned my attention to the chicken. Since I had good luck with Petaluma Poultry’s roasting chicken back in my very first recipe, I bought two packs of “Rocky Jr.” wings at Whole Foods.

In order to add just a little bit more flavor to the wings, I quickly brined the wings in a very basic salt, honey, and thyme brine. They only sat in the brine for about an hour, because wings, obviously, are much smaller than an entire chicken (about 6 hours of brining). I dried the wings before setting them out to be cooked.

Although most wings are fried, I prefer to bake my wings. Considering I’m bathing them in butter, I figure that I don’t need to add any more plaque to my arteries. Before putting them in a 375-degree oven I put a little salt and pepper on the wings for a final dose of flavor. I took them out after about 45 minutes.

Now, it was time to put all the elements together. I had taken the hot sauce out to come to room temperature and measured out 2/3 of a cup of sauce and 1/3 of a cup of beurre blanc. I combined them in a measuring cup, stirred, and poured them over the wings, which were resting in a mixing bowl.

(1/3 of a cup beurre blanc; 2/3 of a cup hot sauce)

Sitting back with a plate full of wings and a Bear Republic Racer 5 IPA in the first quarter as the Colts looked ready to roll over the Saints, I was very content. The spice from the hot sauce and the tangy richness of the beurre blanc worked well together to create a distinctive sauce. The hot sauce, however, was a bit of a one-note sauce. It satisfied its requirement of being hot, but didn’t have much depth to it. This might have been due to the short aging period or the types of chiles I used. Needless to say, it will be a fun challenge to find new ways to improve on Batch #00 of my homemade hot sauce.

Sorry Daffy, It's Duck Season: Roast Duck

Chicken…check. Salmon…check. Beef…check. What’s next on the list of proteins? Lamb? I like lamb sometimes, but I’m not the biggest fan. Veal? Keller talks about the wonders of veal stock, but as for the meat itself I rarely eat it or order it. Wandering through the poultry, meat, and seafood counters at Sunshine Foods (they’re all together in a small horseshoe shape), I had an “A ha!” moment. Duck.

I enjoy duck in many forms, from the legendary Peking Duck at the Peking Gourmet Inn in Falls Church, Virginia to a tasty Duck Confit. I decided to start off simple: roast duck. Plus, the process would give me a necessary by-product if I wanted to try the more complicated confit method: duck fat.

I did not have a good roasting weekend. Both the duck and the next roasting recipe I tried ended up slightly overcooked. The duck stayed in the oven for about 15 minutes too long. Luckily, my overcooking couldn’t completely destroy the great natural flavors in this fresh, local duck from nearby Sonoma Poultry.

(When you buy a duck...you get a whole duck.)

The most difficult part of the process was deciding which recipe to follow. I found a number of different recipes each with different cooking times (from 90 minutes to four hours) and different methods for dealing with the thick layer of fat under the duck’s skin. Here is a sampling of approaches from three well known cooking authorities:

James Beard: cook at 350 degrees for 2.5 hours, pierce skin all over and turn heat up to 400 to cook for 15 minutes and allow fat to drain from skin

Julia Child: cook at 350 degrees for about 90 minutes (she notes that the French like their duck medium-rare) or a little longer for medium, pierce skin before roasting to allow fat to drain during roasting

Ina Garten: pierce duck skin and place duck in a simmering pot of chicken stock for 45 minutes; skim off duck fat that rises to top; allow duck to dry, then roast in 500 degree oven for 30 minutes

I decided to strike something of a middle ground and combine Beard’s and Julia’s approaches. I pierced the skin, making sure not to go all the way through to the flesh, before roasting (Julia’s approach), but decided to leave it in for about two hours (Beard’s approach).

(Duck, trussed and ready to roast)

One of the reasons why roasting a duck appears so daunting is the task of managing the fat. Approximately every twenty minutes, I poked holes in the duck skin on the breast, leg, and thigh with the point of a knife to release additional fat from under the skin. After the duck cooked for a little while it was easy to understand why Beard suggested waiting a little while to pierce the skin: it’s much easier to do once the skin gets slightly crispy. I’m also curious what, if any, affect leaving the fat under the skin has on the flavor and moisture of the meat. But, that’s for another attempt.

(After roasting...you can see the marks in the crispy skin to release the subcutaneous layer of fat)

By the end of the roasting period, the bottom of the pan had collected a large amount of grease, which I saved (but sadly never used). The skin had turned a dark shade of brown and was very crispy. After taking it out of the oven, I let it rest for about 10 minutes.

Carving the duck was a little more complicated than carving a chicken, because there is less meat and more bone. Also, the bones aren’t where you expect them to be. For example, the joint that connects the thigh to the body is much further underneath the duck than on a chicken. It took about four minutes of frustrating searching with the tip of my knife before I finally just ripped it off.

The thigh was tender, but the leg meat and skin had dried out a little too much. Luckily, the meat retained the traditional duck flavors that are a mix of sweetness and gaminess. Similarly, the breast meat was a mix of moist and dry meat but still flavorful.

I served the duck with an improvised foccacia dressing (I didn't want to stuff the bird on my first attempt) that I baked in the oven. I took about half of a plain foccacia loaf that I purchased from the Model Bakery, chopped it into approximately one-inch cubes, and sauteed them with some shallots in a little butter until the bread got slightly browned. I put the bread crumbs in a square, glass baking dish with a few tablespoons of chicken stock to add some flavor and moisture. I put it in a 350 degree oven for about 20 minutes or so. It probably could have gone a little longer, but since I wasn't following any recipe and the duck was ready I pulled it out.

It was my time ever cooking a “game” meat and I’m glad that I tried it, even if it wasn’t a total success. But, I learned some valuable lessons for my next attempt and ended up with some good leftovers that turned into a tasty second meal.

The Oakville Grade - East

Well, my time in Napa has come to an end. The last weekend was something of a grand finale. My fiancee was in town and we went to four wonderful restaurants (including The French Laundry!) and about 10 wineries, some old and some new (including a new favorite). What this all means is that I'm even further behind! But, in my last month as a deferred first-year associate, I'll do my best to catch up.

Now that I'm back home, I hope to continue the blog from this coast. It will now have more of a D.C. focus, but Napa wines and recipes will still appear often.