Food News Roundup

There are two interesting stories today, one in The New York Times and the other in The San Francisco Chronicle featuring two food activist that I want to recommend:

The NYT story, by Kim Severson, profiles Robyn O'Brien who transformed herself into a children's food allergy activist after one of her kids suffered an allergic attack at home. In addition to creating this website, www.allergykids.com, O'Brien has questioned the health effects of food additives and processed foods on kids, and she has also advocated serving kids whole, non-processed foods. Her story is one in a soon-to-be-released book, "Healthy Child, Healthy World."

The Chronicle story, by Carol Ness, takes a look at what Michael Pollan is up to now that his new book, "In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto", is out. Somewhat surpisingly, Pollan tells her that he is planning to move on from writing about food and farming to turn his attention elsewhere. He tells Ness that he has been "uncomfortable" becoming a food movement leader and spokesperson and that he prefers to see himself as a journalist who exposes the facts rather than as a leader of a movement. He rightfully asks, "where are the politicians?" He also told Ness that he does not feel like it is his responsibility to fill the leadership vacuum in the food movement. Very interesting. My question is, who is going to fill that vacuum?

Snapshot Restaurant Review: SPQR

I just returned from dinner at SPQR, the new sister restaurant to A-16 located on Fillmore Street in San Francisco. SPQR is a Roman-themed restaurant with an extensive small plates offering hot, cold and fried antipasti, along with several pasta dishes and a few entrees.

We walked in at about 7:30 pm and were seated immediately. It helped that it's been raining like crazy for the last three days and the restaurant did not seem overly busy.

I immediately reviewed the wine list hoping to find a Nerello Mascalese, but to no avail (we tried our first Nerello Mascalese at A-16 a few months ago--here's my posting about our meal). Our server sent the wine director over, and she engaged us in a fun conversation about Nerello Mascaleses and other similar wines. She pointed out several pinot neros and an interesting Sardinian wine that might be a suitable substitute for us. We chose the wine from Sardegna, 6 Mura, a medium bodied, ripe fruit wine with notes of mint herbs and leather and some tobacco. It was an inspired recommendation.



For food, we ordered three antipasti to share--Grilled Percorino with marinated mushrooms, Red Chard with tomato, fennel and anchovy and Fried Brussel Sprouts with garlic, capers, lemon and parsley. Each dish was outstanding. It's hard to beat grilled cheese, and the crispy pecorino and sweet mushrooms hit the spot. The Red Chard and the brussel sprouts were equally spectacular. The chard was sweet, juicy and tasted like cabbage. The brussel sprouts were crispy and very lemony, and they were delicious.



Lou ordered the Carbonara-Guanciale, eggs, black pepper and pecorino over spaghetti. His dish was rich and eggy, and he loved it. I ordered Steelhead Salmon in porchetta with onion and radicchio agrodolce. The flavors of the fish were excellent, though my piece of salmon was full of bones, which meant that I picked a bone or two out of my mouth after each bite. That was not so pleasant, despite the outstanding flavors.



Despite the bones, the overall experience--the flavors of all the food, the wine, the attentive and friendly service, the warm atmosphere--was wonderful. I'm looking forward to going back.

Beet Soup

I made a red and golden beet soup the other day for dinner. It was my first time cooking beets, and I actually enjoyed watching my hands turn more and more red as I peeled and chopped the beets. The coloring washed off fairly easily.

On the whole, the soup--it's really two soups--turned out well. The recipe calls for stewing the beets separately for about 40 minutes, however I let them go a little longer just to be sure they were soft enough. I also ended up using slightly less than the exact amount of beets called for in the recipe, so I inadvertently added too much milk to the golden beets when I pureed them in the food processor. For the red beets, I scaled back the amount of milk and used only a cup and I was happier with the way they turned out.

We served the leftover soup on Friday night for Amy and Jen, and I thought it might look nice served in teacups. Here's the way it turned out on night number two.

New Year's Day Feast

Brad and Joey treated us to a wonderfully tasty New Year's Day feast, featuring traditional Southern fare of black-eyed peas, collared greens and cornbread. It was a fantastic meal. Brad is a vegetarian, so the whole meal was meat-free, and he succeeded in making delicious black-eyed peas without using pork. His collared greens were also perfectly cooked--using lots of butter helps--and his cornbread was rich, but not overly sweet. For dessert, Joey pulled out two overflowing platters of cookies. He had apparently spent a day baking cookies after returning from his holiday travels, and he made two kinds of shortbread, plain and bourbon, soft ginger cookies, chocolate chip and walnut and several others. My favorite was the bourbon shortbread cookies. It was a perfectly mellow and delicious start to the new year.

Winter Wine Tasting

I went up to the wine country last Sunday for a day of wine tasting with some friends. Our destination was Healdsburg. It was Lou's and my second trip there in the last two months. We first went up there in October with my parents when they came out for a visit, and we had a nice day of tasting with them.

I made a tasting reservation for us at Unti Vineyards--one of the places we dropped in on with my parents. I thought it would be a good place to visit with friends.

This time around we were treated to an unexpected pleasure: Mick, the owner, conducted our tasting and chatted us up. He was great, and Lou and I really enjoyed talking to him. He talked about his wines and told us about his forthcoming fortified wine--he described it as the result of a wine-making screw up--and it's going to be a Banyuls-like wine (Joey and Brad brought us a Banyuls once, and it was fantastic with a peach melba I made). Considering how much I like his other wines, I can't wait to try it when he releases it in March.

We also talked about a wine that Lou and I have tried recently--Nerello Mascalese--and he gave us a couple of recommendations for some producers he likes: Benanti and Cottanera. I'm going to see if Josh at Bi-Rite can find them for us. Nerello Mascalese is a pinot noir-like wine that is grown on the slopes of Mount Etna in Sicily. He said that the wine has been mostly ignored until recently when a few winemakers have applied modern wine-making technique to the grapes and have come out with some spectacular results. He described some of the wines as being even more sublime than the finest Burgundian wines.

We also spoke about restuarants, and he named a few of his favorites in and around Healdsburg and in San Francisco. In Healdsburg, he recommended The Farmhouse and said Dry Creek Kitchen has been more consistent lately, without saying whether it's been consistently good or bad. He also said that Dry Creek Kitchen is usually better when the chef, Charlie Palmer, is cooking. In San Francisco, he spoke highly of A-16 and SPQR (A-16's sister restaurant) as well as about Delfina. Actually, he said Delfina is his favorite restaurant in the city, especially when Craig is cooking a regionally focused menu.

From Unti, we headed over to the Dry Creek Kitchen for lunch. Honestly, it was a disappointment. The food, at least for me, was fine. I ordered a delicate gnocchi with a mushrooms and a smoked salmon eggs Benedict, but Lou rated his dishes as mediocre. The service was pretty bad, and for what we paid for the meal it was not worth it. I wish we had tried the Farmhouse instead.

Overall, however, it was a pleasant day with friends.