Chef's Blog

You’re getting three or four blogs for the price of one today because we were so busy for the past few weeks that I barely sat down at the computer.  Let’s see if I can pull some stuff up on the iphone camera . . .

AAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand I only found two:

I don't know People, or Wine, but my friends sure do, and they're generous friends..

My favorite menu for Fried Chicken Night in a long time--Black bean soup to start; cheese grits with chanterelles, hot and cold endive with grapefruit and tarragon, and butternut squash panzanella to accomapny the chicken; coffee pot de creme for dessert. I know, Roland could have done a better job with this photo, right?

This weekend in the lounge, Napa Smith will be here pouring  and chatting up their seasonal brews; I’m going to work on chicken and sausage gumbo, heritage pork cassoulet, and beef stroganov to accompany them.  All of which are perfect for a cold, rainy January night!  But of course we have the climate of San Diego this winter.  Glad I’m not a skier.

Am I up to three blogs yet?  A re-read says No.  I should write this stuff down as I go, but it just fades away after a day or two, especially at my advanced age.  The New Year’s Eve dinner was a success.  Interestingly, the dishes were “fancier” than our normal ones because we were using luxury ingredients–caviar, truffles, foie gras.  On the other hand, they lacked the level of composition that is found on our normal menu items.

Chefs spend money on those luxury ingredients because they are amazing natural products, and I believe that the best chefs manipulate those items the least–you’re paying top dollar to bring this foie gras in the door, why handle it and change it to the point that it’s unrecognizable?

Ryder chopped the black Perigord truffles and stirred them into a simple vinaigrette to accompany his rabbit terrine.  Zach cut some of the foie gras into batons that filled his squab roulade, and then seared a second piece of foie to serve next to the squab breast and confit leg.  Ryder used osetra caviar on top of his egg-yolk-filled cauliflower sformata (grazie M. Vetri).

SO why don’t we use caviar and truffles and foie gras all the time?

–Their carbon footprint is very large and doesn’t mesh well with our local approach to sourcing.

–The cost for them is so high that our menu prices would skyrocket and turn away hotel and guests and locals who depend on us for high quality at prices that have risen over the past five years, but not sharply.  Additionally, their cost and availability can fluctuate wildly.

–The novelty wears off.  If we cook with luxury ingredients once a year, cooks and diners are thrilled on that one day.  If we cooked with them 365 days a year, everyone would think, Ho-hum.

–After years of cooking in Fine Dining before Solbar opened, I no longer have a great deal of interest in utilizing luxury ingredients.  I’ve said from Day One at this job that I’d rather blow someone’s mind with green salad and roast chicken than truffles and foie gras–the former feat proves that you can cook; the latter, that you can shop.

I’m up to three or four blogs now, and the prep cooks are glaring at me through the wall, I can feel it.  Back to the stoves.

Sonoma Cty was once home to lots of Russian immigrants–Sebastopol is named after a Ukrainian city of the same name.  The ducks we’re using are from Grimaud Farms–they bring us everything but the feathers.

The name of the breed of duck is Muscovy, which sounds an awful like Muscovite, so perhaps the Ukrainians named the ducks after their waddly cousins in Moscow.  Here, I’m speculating irresponsibly and forgetting that I just read something completely different on Wikipedia.

Here, Zach goes for the cleaver, with predictable results.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaand sunset over Solage last night.  Haven’t seen one quite like that before.

Like how I managed to get the streetlamp into the picture?  I know, nice, right?

We also have rabbit from Anderson/Avilla Farms that Andrew put on the menu last night, and hopefully some Texas venison coming soon.

The restaurant and resort are both extremely busy through 1/1/12.  January in Napa Valley sees a lots of restaurant closures and vacations, so we are taking full advantage of NV Restaurant Month in January to blast off with a program called “Un-Wined”.

Each of the four weekends in January, we’ll do a small number of additional menu items around a certain theme (“Swineophilia”; “Oystermageddon”) and also bring in a local distiller or brewer to help us get out the word about hand-crafted beers, ciders, spirits, and other non-grape-based intoxicants.  We have a loyal local following in the bar, and I want them to be able to come in out of the cold and rain and have something at solbar they’ve never tasted before–then do it again the next week.

I know, I know, I can hear the violins playing too, but for the ravenous restaurantgoers up here who have eaten everything at every restaurant ten times already, change is welcome, especially at a time of year when most restaurants are stagnant at best, if not dormant altogether.

Details to follow.  Bradley Wasserman and Michael Pazdon will be leading the charge from the bar.

Mustard is blooming in the vineyards already?  And when I went back to NC for Thanksgiving, the Bradford pears were blossoming?  We’re into December, and it’s yet to feel like football weather here . . .

Ryder came up with the best crab salad I’ve ever had–flavors of the Levant on this one.  Lavash cracker with harissa, preserved lemon, green olive, pomegranate capsules, just bang-on.  Exciting flavors all over the menu right now.

For NV restaurant month in January, we’re going to do un-wined at solbar.  Over four weekends, we’ll do four different food themes–Oysters, Pork, Basque Tapas, and Home Cookin’–with an array of non-wine drinks.  Should be a good time, challenging, but our loyal locals who come to the lounge often will get a kick out of it, and everything will be available in the dining room too.

If you have a good white truffle source, let me know.  I can’t even get scrawny, wet ones for $3200/lb. this year.  And I’ve got the tagliatelle machine all cranked up and ready.

I need to write another whole post about Gustavo’s pasilla chile soup at lunch with the poached egg in it.  Just off the freaking chain, I could eat it three meals a day.

Unfortunately I have no pictures of food to show you at the moment so I’ll just leave you with this.  Man cannot live on bread alone.

My aunt, uncle, and cousin joined me at Angele for the perfect lunch on a cold, rainy day–French onion soup followed by boudin blanc with pommes puree, roasted apples and brussels sprouts, washed down with a glass of cotes-de-Rhone.  Tough to wish it were warm and sunny outside when there’s local French food like that to dig into.

We bought a whole 50# shoat, removed the legs, and ground them for the sausage filling.  I chopped through the spine at the neck, keeping the skin intact, and boned out the spine and ribcage in one huge piece.  We brined the loins, tenderloins, and top rounds overnight, then wrapped the sausage around them and tied the skin up.  Off the porchetta went into the smoker for a good 6 hours.

Smile! Say headcheese!

Last night we had Jayson Woodbridge here with his Layer Cake, Cherry Pie, and Hundred Acre wines.  We even tasted his Fortification, a fortified red wine (18.5%) made only from Cabernet grapes–he and Marko Karakasevic, of Charbay, made an alembic brandy from some of them, and used the brandy to stop the fermentation on another batch.  Special.

We went Paleolithic with the oak-roasted monster ribeyes . . .

My gratitude goes to the Chef de Cuisine, Ryder Zetts, who not only did all the hard work on this dinner but tasted the wines with me and collaborated on the menu items.  (I’ve thanked him in person, but he’s the type that can’t take a compliment.)

tarte tatin, during and after

in better light

the feeder fire.

the pledge

the turn

the prestige

It’s not magic, but it’s also not for kids.

I usually switch my office phone to silent because I’m seldom in there, but today I had the ringer on and my fingers and toes crossed . . . and sure enough the Michelin Angel called to grant my wish.  One Michelin star for solbar–are we the only starred restaurant at which you can have pancakes, pizza, or kobe beef at the exact same table, depending on the angle of the sun?  I certainly effing hope so, because I’ll tell you, our mountain climber breakfast dish may be the best thing we do.  Wait till I add Perigord black truffles to it in three weeks.

~

My friend John McClure, the chef proprietor of Starker’s in St. Louis, took his own life last week.  John and I attended CIA together and were contemporaries in New Orleans; he even visited solbar a couple of times.  My thoughts, prayers, and positive energy are with his family in this time of sorrow.  John was a good chef and a good man.

But for now, lots and lots of menu changes to lunch and dinner last week, and we were so busy I didn’t have time to snap a photo of every one of them with my HiPhone.

Here are a few that were captured–and the ones that got away are the Cuban sandwich (back for a limited time only), butternut squash veloute, escarole and treviso salad with sherry vinaigrette, flatiron steak of Kobe beef with olive oil fried potatoes and beurre colbert, chicken with pumpkin agnolotti and red grapes . . . last Wednesday night, we even put on a 22-oz ribeye of painted hills ranch beef with duck fat potatoes, charred onions and fresh thyme.

hearts of romaine with point reyes "original blue", grilled french butter pear, rose heart radish

not your mama's muffuletta with wild boar sausage, pate de campagne, fontina, crunchy pickled vegetables, and creole potato salad

pork chop with spaetzle, red wine braised cabbage, and granny smith apple salad; butternut squash farrotto with cavolo nero and roasted brussels sprouts; olive oil poached halibut with pear soubise, white beans all'arrabbiata, and seared escarole. You can see the change in the seasons just by the colors on the plates.

Had a regular call me on my day off to request a whole roasted pig for his wife’s birthday.  Mike Panza from Biagio came through with the guest of honor; Goose seasoned and smoked the pig, then we roasted ‘er off.  Even though I have an iPhone 5, the picture came out blurry.  Hm.

Those pomegranates and branches came from right outside our back door.  To get that shine, I brushed the skin with some rendered pancetta fat, left over from crisping up lardons of pancetta that Andrew cured a few weeks ago.  The fragrance coming off of that pig was unreal.

As I carved the pig, I anticipated tasting wines that the guests had brought with them . . . in this case, 1980 Zinfandel from a double magnum.  They moved from that one to younger zins in smaller bottles, which is really the only way they could’ve gone, right?

I served the pig over creamly anson mills polenta and rapini all’arrabiatta with shelling beans with a slightly sweet/sour pork jus.  They wiped it out and asked for more, but I had run out of the vegetables, so we made suckling pig sliders with house recipe barbecue sauce and peach coleslaw on griddled pain au lait buns.  Now THAT’s a good pairing with zin.

Thanks to all for our great showing in the 2012 Zagat.  Keep up the voting for solbar so we can make it to 27 next year.

Couldn’t believe the Braves fell apart like that, but at least I’m not a Red Sox fan.  Ouch.  Go Brewers?  Whatever.  31 days till Tarheel basketball.