Quick Camp Trip to Santa Cruz

DH and I had been hankering to go camping for quite some time so when this past weekend presented no obligations or invitations, we jumped on the opportunity.

Santa Cruz is arguably the easiest area from the Oakland area for an impromptu camping trip so to be somewhat adventurous, we opted to give Big Basin State Park & Campgrounds in Boulder Creek a shot. 

Big Basin is a gorgeous, redwood-riddled park and the town of Boulder Creek is an adorable town in the mountains just NE of Santa Cruz. Boulder Creek is particularly nostalgic to DH as he spent several summers working at Camp Harmon, an Easter Seals camp for the developmentally and physically handicapped.

DH, dwarfed by the redwoods

The one problem with Big Basin SP is that it is capital C-O-L-D COLD in February. That the weather would be cold camping in Northern California in Winter was a given, but there was no preparing us for how cold it actually was. It was 39 degrees when we arrived just after dark and only got colder from there. For all intents and purposes, it was freezing. And we were miserable.

The next morning, we made the executive decision to move camp. 

After cooking up some Nepenthe pancakes and New Orleans style chicory coffee, we packed the car and headed to New Brighton State Beach & Campgrounds just outside of Santa Cruz. We'd camped there once before and couldn't have been happier to return to bright sunshine and warmer conditions.

After setting up camp, we headed straight for the beach, mere footsteps away, to read and soak up the sun. From there, we headed into town to check out Soif, a wine bar and shop friends had raved about. In fact, Soif's wine list (and pricing) was remarkable. 

We picked up some fresh fish & spinach and headed back to start dinner. After recently preparing Jerusalem's risotto style barley, it struck me as the perfect camping recipe. 

Simply sautee celery & shallots in butter & oil, mix in pearl barley, bay leaf & smoked paprika until coated then add passata, chopped tomato & veggie broth and bring to a boil. Bring the heat down to a simmer, cover the pot and within a half hour, you'll have a delicious barley risotto. While the barley is cooking, dry toast caraway seeds in a pan then mix with feta cheese to top the barley. The feta-caraway adds a lot to this dish.

For the fish, sautee finely sliced lemon & garlic confit (with oil), add in the cod and a bit of white wine e voila!, fish is complete.

Lastly, make a quick lemony-shallot vinaigrette for the spinach and throw cara cara oranges & marcona almonds into the mix for a near perfect salad.

The next morning we opted to explore downtown Santa Cruz in lieu of a lingering breakfast at the campground. After cappucino's at the always outstanding Verve Coffee Roasters and sandwiches at Zuccoli's, we happened upon Well Within, a day spa featuring private rooms with a soaking tub, cedar sauna, shower and lounge space for the same price as a campsite. On a whim, we booked the room for one hour. It was arguably the best hour of the weekend. There is nothing quite like a hot shower after camping for a few days; unless of course you add a hot tub and sauna to the mix, then it's pure bliss!

Cooking Jerusalem #2; The Dinner Party

Whenever friends come to visit, we eat out. There have been a few exceptions to this but it is rare. So in an overall effort to eat in more, I opted to cook a meal for friends in town this time around. And what better menu to feature than one hand plucked from my new favorite cookbook, Jerusalem.

It was a Sunday so we took advantage of the Oakland DMV Farmer's Market and stocked up on produce.

Sunday is a great day to buy produce and the second worst day to buy fish (Mondays being #1). Luckily though, Whole Foods had whole mackerel that had been caught the day before. Not ideal but it would have to suffice. More about that later...

To start, I made the butternut squash & tahini spread and sliced Acme's dark Jewish Rye to go with. Ottolenghi suggests drizzling date syrup & sesame seeds over the spread but I opted for molasses as it's a little deeper in flavor (annnd I didn't have a clue where to procure date syrup in time!).

Next came the Mejadra, the one dish both Ottolenghi & Tamimi agree is the most comforting dish of the entire cookbook. After having eaten Mejadra, I'd have to agree emphatically. Not only is this dish ingeniously simple...'why hadn't I ever thought to combine lentils and rice!?', but it is also healthy and deep in flavorful spices (coriander, cumin & turmeric to name a few). This trifecta of simple, healthy & flavorful is further improved by topping it with crispy fried onions. A scoop of labneh mixed in with the mejadra sends this dish over the top!

Mackerel is a polarizing fish. Because it is a 'fishy' fish and somewhat oily, people either hate it or can't get enough of it. Marinating it in harissa and serving with a Moroccan-inspired orange, olive & golden beet salad luckily left everyone wanting more mackerel! The acid of the salsa cuts the fattiness of the fish perfectly.

While the deserts in Jerusalem are nothing short of persuasive, it being January DH insisted we prepare his favorite dessert, the winter citrus tart from another favorite cookbook, the Big Sur Bakery cookbook.

It would be a tragedy not to take advantage of the citrus bounty this time of year and this winter citrus tart celebrates the season's most plentiful fruit. Paired with almond cream, the  citrus in the crust, the marmalade and the fruit slices sings. One of these days, I will make this tart for brunch as it goes perfectly with coffee the next morning. 

***

Jerusalem, the dinner party ought to be a regular occurrence!

Cooking Jerusalem #1; the condiments

I've never been big on resolutions. That said though, the new year is as good a time as any to try something new. And what better to start the new year than with a new(ish) cookbook. 

Jerusalem is the 3rd cookbook by Yotam Ottolenghi, the much lauded Israel-by-way-of-London chef and Sami Tamimi. 'Jerusalem: The Cookbook' reads more like a cultural history book and is a beautiful marriage of the Eastern Palestine influences of Tamimi youth with Western Jewish traditions of Ottolenghi's upbringing.

Every photo is more enticing than the next, it is hard to know where to begin. I opted to start at the end...with the condiments.

With any cookbook that aims to tackle a whole cuisine, particularly one I'm not so familiar with, it seems best to fill the pantry and/or refrigerator with the spices, sauces and condiments that will be used throughout the book.

ZHOUG.

This recipe is described as the Middle Eastern gremolata. Since gremolata is God's nectar IMHO, there was no question I would make this first. A combination of cilantro, parsley & hot green chiles (jalapenos or an equally hot pepper) with cumin, cardamom, & cloves; the depth of flavor in Zhoug is incredible and goes great on labne, folded into eggs or simply on a spoon!  

LABNEH.

Granted, I haven't tackled every recipe, but this has to be the easiest one in the book. Labneh is strained yogurt, essentially. Simply select the yogurt you wish to use (they recommend equal parts goat milk & cow milk yogurt), line a bowl with cheesecloth, pour yogurt onto the cloth and tie it off to strain out the excess liquid. Within 24 hours you'll have delicious labneh, a wonderful addition to meat & rice dishes or great on its own with harrisa and zhoug.

HARISSA.

Harissa can be transcendent. The harissa recipe is not. It is fine and works quite well as a marinade for fish but I prefer a more liquid consistency when it comes to harissa.  

QUICK PICKLED LEMONS.

There is a recipe for preserved lemons, which take a month or so set and then there is a recipe for quick pickled lemons, which take a day to set. I opted for the latter recipe and while I've yet to make the former, the quick pickled lemons are quite nice. Pickled or preserved lemons are a great addition to just about every dish, particularly meats, fishes and grains.

...can't wait to cook up more recipes from this beautiful book!

A New Tradition...

DH loves Christmas Trees. Who doesn't, right? I mean, I love them and all too but more in theory than in practice. They smell great, look great and are surely festive but man, are they messy. Plus, there's the whole fire hazard element but we won't go there. That's exactly enough of the Bah Humbug spirit!

Since we decided to stay local this year, I insisted we take advantage of the local trade and chop down our own from one of the many Christmas tree farms in Sonoma County. 

There's more Christmas tree farms than you'd know what to do with out in West County. How DH landed on Frosty Mountain Farms was beyond me. All the same, we arrived an hour before sunset and were directed to grab a saw and dolly and be on our way.

With over 12 acres of trees, most of which are Douglas Firs, there was a lot of ground to cover before the sun dropped completely. While walking up and down the field of trees, DH declared, "Wherever we are, let's make this a yearly tradition". I concurred.

There were loads of winning trees but we set our hearts on a smaller tree with several pine cones near the top because really, who can resist a Christmas tree with its own pine cones in it!? 

(No one is the answer)

DH set to sawing it down, a task we both reconciled would be extremely difficult but in reality was surprisingly effortless. At $7.50 a foot, our hand-sawed Douglas Fir was just under $40. 

To the first of many family traditions to come!

Humble Beginnings

Talk is cheap but action is priceless.

For some time now, DH and I have talked about 'starting a winery' together. This prospect has been met with equal parts enthusiasm & evasion. "So you're buying a vineyard?", inquisitive loved ones inquired. The reality of starting a winery is far smaller scale than that.
In fact it amounted to two half T-bins of tiny-berried, Clone 76 Chardonnay from the Manchester Ridge Vineyard in the Mendocino Ridge A.V.A. in Mendocino, Ca.
The sum of the pick amounted to not even a full ton but .93 ton; a whisper of a start by any man's measure.

Since this is entirely our own project, we quickly realized we would need all our own equipment (i.e. racks, bungs, topping keg, ect.) so we made a quick trip to Napa Valley Fermention Supply. NVFS has been in business just shy of 30 years and is an institution to professionals and amateurs alike. We purchased the needed supplies and what ensued was one of our great follies.

Barrel racks are a relatively easy thing to transport, unless of course your transportation is a Toyota Corolla. Ever the MacGyver and never one to take 'NO' for an answer, DH rigged a bungee cord under the roof of the trunk and around the barrel rack and like that, we were off...verrry sloooowly, back to the winery and back to a fair amount of ridicule. These are our humble beginnings.

After the great jura-chablis debate, we agreed to foot-tread half the lot in order to impart some of that Jura-like, tannic complexity without overdoing it. This ancient process allows the grape skins to have contact with the grape juice before going through the press.

An hour or so later, the lot drops into the press and goes thru a 90 minute, washing machine-like cycle to ensure all the juice is extracted from the grapes. The first part to pass thru is called 'free run', or the juice produced from the foot-tread experiment.

 Next comes the light run, typically the sweetest juice of the lot as it is from the berries with the thinnest skin.
The longer the press runs, the more intense the juice becomes, due to longer contact with the seeds, skin & stems. Some winemakers opt to keep each of these press cycles separate but we are opting to keep the lot together for the entire life cycle of the wine.

Once the cycle finishes, the pressed wine is transported to neutral French Oak barrels to begin fermentation. We opted to use neutral oak because it does not impart the flavors of new oak but it does allow the wine to breathe (unlike stainless steal fermentation tanks).
And that, in a nutshell, is how you start a winery! 
Stay tuned for more!...

The Great Debate; jura vs. chablis

When you ask most people with careers in the wine industry how they got there, there is usually a specific wine that got them there. By that I mean it is usually from drinking one exceptional glass/bottle of wine that makes a person say, "I want to make wine like this" or "I want to sell wine like this", ect. This proverbial bottle can often change over the years but there's always a first.
For DH it was an '06 Auteur Manchester Ridge Pinot Noir.
For me, it was the 2010 Domaine Alain Labet, Cotes du Jura Chardonnay, Fleurs, just a few months ago. (Well, technically it was a bottle of '06 Stemmler Pino Noir drank almost 5 years ago but that has more to do with first understanding why DH had chosen the path to winemaking.)   

VIN JAUNE; oxidizing white wine

I was skeptical at first to drink a Jura wine, assuming all Jura's were 'Vin Jaune', sherry-like wine aged up to 6 years in Burgundian oak and allowed to oxidize over time. The result is an intense flavor not for the faint of heart (moi!).
But while this is the most famous wine from the region, there are some extraordinary Chardonnay producers from Jura as well.
The 'Flueurs' Cotes du Jura Chardonnay is the polar opposite of a Vin Jaune; utterly bright and crisp while still posessing a dynamic tannic profile and complexity.
We bought a cold bottle to accompany our fish sandwiches from Oakland's gem, Market Hall for an impromptu picnic a few months back. It was a nothing day which made the wine shine all the more.
One sip in and I was hooked. I declared to DH, "I want to make wine just like this." He sweetly concurred, "yes, let's." and with that we carried on with our picnic.
*     *      *
As our first foray (together) into the winemaking process is fast upon us, we revisited the Jura Chardonnay conversation more in depth yesterday.
Labet's Jura Chardonnay is made with some skin:juice contact (meaning the grape skins are in with the pressed wine grape juice during fermentation), producing the tannic complexity so distinct in the wine. 
Do note, this skin:juice contact is brief as prolonged contact during fermentation would lead to an orange wine. Most red wines go through the entire fermentation process with skin:juice contact.
While DH loved the Jura wine equally, he felt it imperative to taste it against a Chardonnay produced in a similar process (i.e. neutral oak, low alcohol, native fermentation) without skin:juice contact. 
We purchased the same 2010 Domaine Alain Labet, Cotes du Jura Chardonnay, Fleurs along with a 2011 Vendanges Chablis by Patrick Piuze. 

I whipped up a Thai mussel soup and an heirloom tomato salad to pair with these two crisp whites while we watched the first of the Presidential Debates. Two debates in one night, imagine that.

The tannic structure of the Jura definitely stood out from the Chablis but it was arguably impossible to say which one we preferred. Both wines were high acid, low alcohol so while great on their own, they both paired exceptionally well with food. We'd be happy making both wine styles!
So while we are still unsure of just what Chardonnay we will make this harvest, the debate on the table was far more interesting than the one on the screen! zing!