Matters of Taste

A Truffled Mushroom Latte "Shooter" -- What's Not to Love?

Once upon a time a shot was just a shot. A plain shot glass filled with straight booze and drunk without ceremony. Oh, how I loved St. Patrick’s Days in the ‘70s, when we’d slurp a shot of Jamesons along with a Coors draft at Aspen’s Little Annie’s Eating House, all the while throwing quarters across the bar, for some reason I don’t recall now and probably didn’t know then either.

But shots and shooters have evolved over the years. Today, it’s more likely to be Jagermeister, Red Bull, Absinthe, jell-o or glitzy Goldschläger in that little glass, and the concoction is more likely to be shaken, stirred, blended or layered instead of simply poured. Moreover, today’s shooter often has no booze involved at all, but rather presents us with a few morsels or sips showing off the chef’s talent and inspiration.

  Recently I was blown away by chef Jason Knibb’s Mushroom Latte Shooter at Nine-Ten restaurant in La Jolla, CA. Served in a slim liqueur glass, it was no more than two tablespoons of soup but it packed huge flavor and an unforgettable come-hither aroma. Knibbs calls it a “latte” because of the pouf of creamy, truffle-scented foam on top. This isn’t a shooter to belt back in one gulp, but rather one to sip and savor and hope it will never end.

Here’s the recipe. Knibb doesn’t suggest how many servings it makes, but I’d guess it will serve 6 to 8 people as a first course; more if you’re doing elegant little shooters.

NINE-TEN'S MUSHROOM LATTE “SHOOTER” WITH TRUFFLE FROTH

4 tablespoons olive oil

1 yellow onion, diced

1 leek, thinly sliced and washed well

3 celery stalks, diced

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 pounds cremini mushrooms

1 pound maitake mushrooms

1 tablespoon fresh thyme, leaves picked from stems

½ Yukon Gold potato, peeled and diced

1 cup heavy cream

Kosher salt

Freshly ground pepper

For the Truffle Froth

2 cups low-fat milk

1 tablespoon white truffle oil

1 pinch soy lecithin, optional (this helps ingredients bind together…Bob’s Red Mill is a good brand)

Kosher salt

 

Heat 4 tablespoons olive oil in a medium size stock pot over medium-low heat.  Add onions, leeks, celery and garlic. Stir and season with a teaspoon of kosher salt. Sweat vegetables until tender, about 15 minutes, stirring often. Reduce heat to low. Once vegetables are tender, add mushrooms and thyme. Sauté the mushrooms until they begin to wilt and become fragrant. Add potatoes and enough water to barely cover the ingredients.

Bring to a boil and reduce to a simmer.  Let simmer for 20 minutes over low heat. Add cream and remove from burner. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Using a blender, puree soup in batches until smooth. (Be careful when blending hot soups. If the lid is tight and there is not room for steam to escape, the lid will pop off and create a mess.) Once soup is blended, serve immediately or chill and serve later. 

To make the Truffle Froth, place milk and truffle oil in a small saucepan.  Bring to a boil and immediately remove from heat. Add the milk mixture and the soy lecithin to a blender and blend for thirty seconds. Season to taste. To re-froth just before serving, use a hand-held emersion blender or  blend in the blender again. Skim off the froth from the top of the milk and place on top of soup. Serve immediately.

 

 

The Beet Salad to Beat

Carl Schroeder, the genius behind Market in Del Mar and the new Bankers Hill Bar & Restaurant in San Diego, is loved and respected for many things: Cabernet-braised short ribs with sweet onion-potato puree; duck confit; blue cheese soufflé; and roasted king salmon with cauliflower gratin among them. But it’s his beet salad with goat cheese – first introduced at Arterra in 2002 -- that folk seem to fuss over the most.

And now it seems that Schroeder has done the impossible: Made it better.

Last week I enjoyed a terrific dinner at Bankers Hill. Kicking it off was the Roasted Beet & Fuji Apple Salad, an elegant assembly of red and yellow beets, wide, tissue-thin shavings of apple, arugula, goat cheese, candied almonds and creamy mustard dressing. Since I’m not normally crazy about fruit being slipped into a salad --- I especially dislike interloping berries --- I was pleasantly surprised to discover the flavor and texture boost provided by the sweet, crisp apple.

It seemed to me that the chef cored the apple, left the skin on, then ran the whole apple over a razor-sharp mandoline. The graceful ribbons tickled the tongue and looked beautiful atop the greens…if Christo ever decided to get into food, this is how it might look!

Chef Schroeder’s recipe follows. He, of course, roasts the beets and candies the almonds himself. However, to streamline the process, I suggest buying pre-cooked, cryovac-packaged beets (available at Trader Joe’s and other markets) and packaged candied almonds or even pecans or hazelnuts. Most important of all, use a good mandoline to get the apple slices paper-thin.

BANKERS HILL BEET SALAD
Serves 6

2 large yellow beets, roasted and sliced into rounds
2 bunches baby red beets, roasted and cut into quarters
6 oz baby arugula
1 large Fuji apple, shaved
1/2 cup candied almonds
6 oz. fresh goat cheese
1/4 cup of your favorite vinaigrette
Salt and pepper to taste
Honey Mustard Dressing, for drizzling

Dress the yellow and red beets separately in vinaigrette. Season with salt
and pepper. Place 2 slices of yellow beet in the center of each plate. In
a separate bowl, toss together the arugula, shaved apples, goat cheese and
candied almonds with vinaigrette and salt and pepper to taste. Top each
plate of yellow beets with a small handful of the salad. Place the red
beets around the outside. Drizzle with honey mustard dressing.



HONEY MUSTARD DRESSING

1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/2 sour cream
1/4 cup buttermilk
2 tablespoons whole grain mustard
2 tablespoons honey
2 tablespoons cider Vinegar
1 teaspoon dijon mustard
1/2 teaspoon salt
Pinch freshly ground pepper

Building a Better French Fry

I can think of a lot of ways to jazz up homemade French fries, starting with frying them twice for maximum crispness, as the French do.

Dipping them in homemade aioli. Drizzling them with first-rate truffle oil. Spritzing them with malt vinegar. Those things work, too.

But until now I had never contemplated tossing French fries with duck fat.

Yes, I know that some chefs cook the starchy batons in a combo of duck fat and vegetable oils. But the 27-year old chef-owner of a new La Jolla eatery seems to be among the few who anoint regular cooked fries with duck fat, shallots, fresh herbs and grated parmesan cheese. Brandon Fortune, who hails from Atlanta, says he fries frozen white potatoes, “5/16” size, in soybean oil.  When they’re almost done, he swoops them from the hot oil and slips them into a metal mixing bowl that’s been sitting on an adjacent burner. Just minutes before the exchange, he scoops a tablespoon or two of room temperature (solid) duck fat into the bowl along with minced shallots and garlic, minced fresh basil and parsley and grated parmesan cheese. The fries are tossed around in their haute hot tub for a minute or two, then finished with a few drops of white truffle oil and a flurry of parmesan.

I tasted them recently during dinner at Aquamoreé, the restaurant that Brandon and his mother, Sheila,  opened about a month ago on La Jolla’s Prospect Street. It was love at first bite. Fragrant, delicious, the perfect ratio of crisp to tender, these were fries to shout about. Moreover, they were still stellar examples of the art some 20 or30 minutes after their arrival at our table. I asked Fortune how they keep their admirable crispy texture even after they’ve cooled to room temperature. It’s the duck fat, he replied, pointing out that duck fat is normally a solid, so as the fries cool, it returns to its solid state.

I guess that’s about as good an argument as you’re going to get about why French fries are bad for our arteries.

But it’s also about as good a reason as it gets for pigging out on Aquamoreé's Truffled Pommes Frites with Aioli Duo.

If you’re inspired to try this gig at home, be aware that Williams-Sonoma sells duck fat – all neat and tidy in a little glass jar – for $10.95 (11.2 ounces). Know, too, that there are plenty of Web sites out there giving instructions on frying potatoes and other things in duck fat or a duck fat-veggie oil combo. One of the most informative, and engaging, is The Cooking of Joy.

If you’re inclined intead to hustle over to Aquamoreé, you’ll find an attractive, stylish restaurant (with an unfortunately high noise level) and an extensive, eclectic menu that includes southern specialties such as shrimp ‘n grits, sophisticated fare such as espresso braised beef short ribs and seared ahi with pineapple-mango salsa, and clever riffs on international dishes such as carnitas sliders with jalapeno cabbage slaw.

 

 

 

 

A Perfect "10" at Nine-Ten Restaurant

The night before I left for my recent week at Rancho La Puerta Fitness Resort & Spa, I met a friend for dinner in the bar at Nine-Ten in La Jolla. Normally, I like to sit in the dining room and order from chef Jason Knibb’s tantalizing menu that includes things like a summer peach, prosciutto and burrata cheese salad; Alaskan halibut with zucchini pesto and artichokes; and Maine scallops with crispy Yukon potato confit.

But on that night, I figured the bar menu’s big burger with a mountain of truffled French fries was a good idea, given that I’d be on a strict vegetarian diet for the following week. (In the 70 years since it opened in Tecate, Mexico, the Ranch has evolved from totally vegetarian to offering a fish option for dinner some nights. However, since the vegetable dishes are so inventive and full of flavor, I stick with them.) 

Served on pastry chef Jack Fisher’s freshly baked bun, with Dijon-spiked homemade aioli, and just-about-to-soften chunks of Point Reyes blue cheese, this was the Bo Derek of burgers. The meat itself was extraordinary – a mass of coarsely ground, natural, prime-grade chuck steak, gently formed into a plump patty. Ordered medium-rare, it arrived with a lovely charred outside, and a pink, juicy interior that was so loosely formed I could discern the varying textures with each bite. A lettuce ruffle, sliced tomato and homemade pickles completed the pretty picture.

So delicious was this burger that eight nights later, I was back for more. Why not conclude my spa experience the same way I started it, I asked myself as we drove home from Tecate. 

Again, the burger shone. And those two glasses of  Pinot Noir tasted mighty fine too after a week in the Ranch's alcohol-free zone.

Now, I’m not suggesting that either Nine-Ten’s burger-and-fries or Rancho La Puerta’s Garden Zucchini Casserole with Melted Cheese, Crispy Leeks and Chipotle Sauce is preferable to the other. I’m just saying I loved the bookend approach: Two blow-it-all-out burger feasts bracketing seven days of the kind of wonderful food we need to be eating if we want to enjoy a long and healthy life.

 You can create Rancho La Puerta menus at home with remarkable little effort with the cookbook, “Cooking with the Seasons at Rancho La Puerta” by Deborah Szekely and Deborah Schneider. It’s $23.10 at Amazon.com.

 

Gastropubs 101

What’s in a name? Well, if the name in question is “gastropub,” the answer is, a whole lot of confusion.

So begins my story  in today's San Diego Union-Tribune.(Photo of Jayne's Gastropub in North Park, San Diego, by John R. McCutchen)

According to most sources, the term gastropub was coined in 1991 by the owners of a traditional pub in London, who wanted to team upscale, high-quality food with the beer and booze that drew fans to their establishment. The result was a new type of eatery that bridged the gap between booze halls and fine-dining restaurants, between pub grub and haute cuisine.

Check out the story on-line to learn about trend-setting San Diego restaurants, and easy ways to duplicate the gastropub's cool look and casual vibe in your own home. The FOOD story also includes recipes, including a terrific Black & Tan Mac & Cheese and  a dreamy cocktail called the Carolina Cross.

 

 

Feeding the Hungry: Food 4 Kids Backpack Program

Everyone is fixated on food this week. That’s what Thanksgiving is all about.

So it seems particularly appropriate to also spend some time thinking about the people who don’t have enough to eat.  The San Diego Food Bank launched a program in 2007 to provide food for chronically hungry elementary school students. Specifically, the Food 4 Kids Backpack Program provides food to feed them on weekends when they’re at home and often left with nothing to eat. (Photo from the San Diego Food Bank Website.)

Every Friday, eligible kids in some dozen San Diego, Vista and Chula Vista schools, receive backpacks with child-friendly items such as peanut butter, pop-top canned goods, cereal, juice boxes, fruit cups, raisins, pudding cups, granola bars, shelf-stable milk and macaroni and cheese tucked inside. The food is placed in a backpack for the student to carry home, avoiding the stigma (and hassle)  that might accompany a bag of groceries.

According to a Food Bank press release, “charitable donations are down this year and hunger in San Diego County is up.” To help address the problem, San Diego food bloggers, led by Alice Robertson and Caron Golden , are spearheading a fund-raising drive. The program costs a mere $6.00 per week per child to fund (that’s about two Starbucks grande lattes); a donation of $250.00 will fund a child for the entire 36-week school year.

Donors can contribute on line at FirstGiving.com. In addition, there will be a backpack and food drive on Saturday, December 12^th, from 9 am – 12 noon, at the Little Italy Mercato at Date and India Streets. Non-perishable, kid-friendly food items and backpacks in good condition are requested.

Living A Dog’s Life...and Happy About It!

Last night my husband attended a dinner meeting at The Lodge at Torrey Pines in La Jolla, CA. The group dined in the Lodge’s A. R. Valentien restaurant on yummy things like seared halibut with baby red artichokes; warm lobster salad with Little Gem lettuce; and chicken cooked under a brick and served with wilted spinach.

Geena, our vivacious black lab, and I stayed home and dined on Wellness Super 5 Mix (Geena) and Trader Joe’s whole wheat spaghetti with Monte Bene Tomato Basil Pasta Sauce (me). 

When my husband walked in later carrying the traditional doggie bag – in this case, a small shiny paper box, Geena and I both sat up expectantly. Lucky for me, it was the human who got the treat this time, not the dog.

And what a treat it was. Tres Leches Cake, from the kitchen of Executive Chef Jeff Jackson, is a sublime creation of sponge cake soaked in condensed milk, whole milk and heavy cream. A popular dish on the potluck and church-social circuit, this traditional Latin American dessert (translation: three milks) is often soggy, overly sweet and piled high with frosting.

But the A. R. Valentien version, by pastry chef John Harmeyer, is an elegant, individual, dome-shaped package with a deliriously smooth, moist texture and a rich, caramelized creamy taste. Topped with cinnamon-scented whipped cream and tangy pomegranate seeds, it’s served with a fresh quince-apple puree and a weensy poached apple.

By the way, we did give Geena a dog biscuit so she wouldn’t feel left out. She ate it, but not before giving us a look that said “You cheated me!”

Wild About Mushrooms

American shoppers are accustomed to getting any food they want at the supermarket any time of year. Raspberries in the dead of winter?  South America’s gotcha covered. White asparagus in October? Hothouse varieties to the rescue.

 

But somehow the mushroom plays by different rules. Sure, you can get cultivated white mushrooms, also known as button mushrooms, year round. Shiitake enoki, and cremini , too. But there are many types of  mushrooms that can only be found deep in the woods, and only during the autumn months.  Mushroom connoisseurs swear by the  more intense, interesting and rewarding flavor of wild mushrooms, and go crazy each fall when treasures like the chanterelle ( a trumpet-shaped, delicately flavored mushroom that has never been successfully cultivated) hit the produce stands.

 

Nadia Frigeri is one of those mushroom lovers. The accomplished cooking teacher and  European food tour guide, taught a “mushroom” class last week at San Diego’s Cooking with Class Cooking School.  My son, Ben, gave me the class as a birthday gift and went with me.

We arrived to find Nadia elbow deep in six or seven types of mushrooms. As she sorted, washed, chopped and sautéed, the animated cook shared valuable information and delicious recipes.  She also shared her passion. I probably haven’t cooked a mushroom in my kitchen in five years It’s just not an ingredient that I often have a hankering for. But this week, armed with my new “skills” and Nadia’s user-friendly recipes, I’m taking full advantage of the season.

 Valuable tidbits from Nadia Frigeri :

 *** With chanterelles, cut off only the tiniest bit of  dark, hard edge. Every other part of the mushroom is edible and easy to clean. Bugs don’t like chanterelles.

 *** Generally speaking it’s better to wash mushrooms quickly in a bowl of water than wipe them with a cloth or mushroom brush. Chanterelles can sit in the water for a few minutes; spongier types of mushrooms should be removed quickly before they absorb too much water.

 *** Portobello mushrooms and the smaller portobellini are best grilled or broiled whole.

 *** Do not use tough shiitake stems in cooking. They are good only for mushroom broth.

 *** Don’t store mushrooms in plastic bags. They will sweat and lose their water content.

 *** Fontina cheese is ideal for cooking because it melts evenly, unlike other cheeses that separate into a fat puddle and a chewy glob.

 *** Cut cooled polenta into squares or discs with dental floss, not a knife.

 *** Shiitake mushrooms come in two grades: Grade 1 is more delicate, more flavorful and substantially more expensive than Grade 2.

*** Use Blue Castello, a triple-crème blue cow’s milk cheese from Denmark,  if Gorgonzola is too costly or not available.

*** Add a large pinch of cayenne pepper when cooking polenta for a brighter flavor.

*** San Diegans are blessed with a top-notch source of wild and cultitvated mushrooms that cost a fraction of  mushrooms in area supermarkets. Specialty Produce is a wholesale operation that is also open to the public. The produce offerings are extraordinary, both in terms of quality and variety. Nadia estimates that mushrooms at Specialty Produce cost about one-third the same product at Whole Foods.

My son and I loved Nadia’s Filet Mignon with Gorgonzola Cheese and Mushroom Sauce, and her Baked Portobellini Mushrooms Stuffed with Gorgonzola, Herbs and Breadcrumbs that were served on polenta (pictured here). But it was this recipe – roasted slices of butternut squash topped with mixed mushrooms and fontina cheese – that we’ve decided to show off on our Thanksgiving table this year.

 

ZUCCA E FUNGHI GRATINATI

(Roasted Butternut with Mushrooms and Fontina Cheese)

Serves 8

 2-3 pounds butternut squash, peeled and cut into 3/4 –inch slices

Salt and freshly ground pepper

Extra virgin olive oil

 

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 to 1 ½ pounds mixed mushrooms, such as chanterelle, cremini, oyster and shiitake

2-3 garlic cloves, crushed and chopped or 1 tablespoon roasted garlic puree

¼ cup chopped Italian parsley leaves

½ cup chicken or vegetable broth, heated (optional)

½ cup grated Parmesan cheese or grated Swiss cheese

6-8 ounces Italian fontina or French raclette cheese, shredded

 

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.  Place the butternut squash slices on a large piece of parchment paper on a baking sheet, season with salt and pepper and drizzle with the oil. Bake for about 20 minutes or until the slices are tender but still firm. Remove from the oven and set aside.

Arrange the squash slices on a buttered baking dish, season with salt and pepper and sprinkle with the grated Parmesan cheese.

Quickly wash the mushrooms in a bowl of cool water. Pat dry with paper towels.

In a medium skillet, heat the butter and remaining oil.  Add mushrooms, garlic and parsley. Stir until the mushrooms start to soften and the garlic starts to color. Season with salt and pepper. Add broth, if desired, and cook for 3 or 4 minutes.

Spoon the cooked mushroom mixture over the squash slices, top with shredded fontina cheese and bake for about 15 minutes, or until cheese starts to bubble.

 

 

Times Flies....When You're Eating Well

What’s it like to ‘eat for a living’?

 

Today’s edition of The La Jolla Light features my story about becoming its first restaurant critic 30 years ago, and watching the dining scene evolve over the years from margaritas-and-nachos territory to a sophisticated, trend-setting celebration of terrific  food.

 

San Diego residents and visitors alike will laugh at the vintage photos (at left, in 1981, a super cool Bertrand Hug watches chef Andre Mena do his stuff) and cry over the tarte tatin and confit de canard that they’ll never get to taste again.

Check it out.

For the Love of Cod!

Today’s chefs love to talk about simplicity, as in “I take fresh local ingredients and prepare them simply.” But much of the time, it’s just lip service, and they proceed to gussy up the food with sauces, seasonings and, now, chemistry class experiments. 

Nobu Matsuhisa is the master of simplicity.

I first discovered this pioneer of contemporary Japanese cuisine in the mid-1990s in New York City, where he opened NOBU (with partners Robert De Niro and restaurateur Drew Nieporent) in 1994. (His first restaurant had opened in L.A. in 1987.)

On my first visit I was blown away by his Black Cod with Miso. On my second visit I was blown away by his Black Cod with Miso.

And last weekend, at the year-old NOBU in downtown San Diego’s Hard Rock Hotel, I was blown away by his Black Cod with Miso.

I’m telling you, this dish is so fabulous that I cannot seem to move beyond it on the menu. The rest of my group swooned over voluptuous fresh uni (sea urchin roe) served with just a sprinkle of  Peruvian chile paste; and plump seared scallops with a daub of peppery wasabi sauce; and fresh sole from Greenland, simply broiled and buttered, with a few wispy, deep-fried celery root leaves scattered on top. All the while, I sat quietly, savoring and marveling at each luscious, lightly perfumed, beguilingly sweet morsel of my cod. It sat alone on the dish. No sauce. No garnish. No sidekicks. Pure, delectable simplicity.

Of course, I did TASTE a few other things…and I was particularly spellbound by the elegance and effortlessness of two vegetable dishes from the brick oven. Fresh baby corn, still in their husks, were roasted and then spritzed with citrusy yuzu-butter. Roasted cauliflower rosettes had a sweet subtle, lightly caramelized flavor that was accentuated by a barely-there sauce of pureed jalapenos, garlic, Japanese vinegar and discreet grapeseed oil. I wouldn’t so much call this a sauce as a “mist.” Semantics aside,  I lapped up every last droplet with gusto.

For such a high-end and cutting-edge establishment,  NOBU has some very gentle prices. The brick oven veggie dishes cost $11; and the extraordinary black cod is just $22.

Simple.

Sensational.