Posted by Anita on 12.22.06 8:25 AM
I’ve appealed to your sense of adventure, your sense of holiday panic, and now I’m going to appeal to your sense of altruism. As you enjoy this season of plenty, couldn’t you spare $10 or $20 for the UN World Food Programme? If you haven’t already done so — or, heck, even if you have — please head over and buy a ticket or two for the Menu for Hope charity raffle.
If putting food in the mouths of starving kids isn’t enough motivation for ya, let me try another tactic: Have you seen some of the things you could win? There are dozens of top-shelf cookbooks, hosted dinners at schmancy restaurants, some really cool culinary art donated by pros, one-of-a-kind treats made just for you, baskets of local ingredients from all over the country, food tours of some of the world’s culinary capitals, high-end kitchen gadgets galore, even the chance to meet a celebrity or two. Honestly, I’m having a hard time not bidding on every dang thing on the list!
You might think, with close to $50,000 in tickets already spoken for, that your odds would be slim. But as of right now, you have a 1-in-12 chance of winning our prize… and a 33% chance of taking home at least eight other offerings, including two different prize packages that include the highly covetable Tartine cookbook.
To boost your chance of winning, may I suggest that you check out Sam’s cool list of the odds on the prizes donated by West Coast bloggers? Then head over to the donation page and buy a ticket, stat: bidding closes at 6pm Pacific time today.
other blogs, shopping
Comments Off on That holiday feelin’
Posted by Anita on 12.22.06 6:30 AM
I’ll start right off by saying you’re just going to have to trust me on this one. I’m sure your first reaction will be the same as mine: A raised eyebrow and a faintly upturned nose. But sneer at your own peril.
At the top of the month, Cameron and I found ourselves at Sutra, attending to the festivities of the office holiday party. Amid cold canapes and hot gossip, we overheard my boss order a Gin and Coke from a passing cocktail waitress.
“Gin and Coke, did you say?” I inquired.
“Mm, yeah.” he replied, sensing my skepticism. “Something I used to drink a lot when I lived in Spain.”
Hours passed, with conversation lubricated by liberal wine pours (made even more generous by waiters struggling to pacify our large party as we waited far, far too long for entrees). The boss ordered another of his bizarre beverages, and I couldn’t help but dig a little deeper.
“So, tell me again how you came to drink this… curious cocktail,” I quipped.
By way of response, he simply offered me his glass. One of my culinary resolutions this year was to taste anything once, so I took a tentative sip. And then another. And then a huge grin broke across my face as I realized that this kooky concoction — something that sounds like you’d drink it only in desperation — is surprisingly good. I mean, it’s no Manhattan, but it would make a solid option should you find yourself in a bar of suspect mixological credibility.
The instruction continued: “In Spain, they make it with a gin called Larios, which is like Gordon’s. Don’t mess it up with the fancy stuff — you need a gin with a bit of bite.” The garnish? Possibly lime, but more probably lemon to be authentic. (Apparently, they’re not much for limes en España.)
One last obstacle remained: “Gin & Coke” is a terrible name, not the least because it sounds, well, rather disgusting. I suggested we christen it with the boss’s surname, but he demured.
“Call it the Orpez,” he countered, with a wistful tone and a far-away stare. “She’s the one who introduced it to me.”
La Orpez
1-1/2 ounces gin
Coke
wedge of lemon
Add the gin to an ice-filled rocks glass, then fill the glass with Coke; stir to combine. Garnish with a wedge of lemon, and serve with a jaunty Iberian air.
Drink of the Week, recipes
5 Comments »
Posted by Anita on 12.19.06 10:32 PM
I’m back here in Vegas, and… oh, who am I kidding? I’m back here in Henderson, home of tract houses, chain restaurants, and megamarts. Very nice ones, all of them, but still… a bit prefab. On my last visit, I drove almost 10 miles to the nearest Whole Foods, on the other side of town, in a fit of homesickness. Imagine my disappointment to find rock-hard avocados, bin after bin of out-of-season produce, and sickly looking everything. I guess it was better than Vons, but only just.
So when a friend suggested that I check out a place called Valley Cheese, I was a little skeptical. If even Whole Foods can’t deliver the goods in this culinary wasteland, I didn’t have much hope that a small shop would do any better. When I found their rather sad website, I was even more suspicious. But — what the hell — I was bored and hungry, and needed an excuse to get out of the house.
Valley Cheese & Wine is the kind of place you could drive right by for months and not even know it’s there, set back off the street in what can only be described as an upscale industrial park, adjacent to a construction site. Inside, it’s another world: The spacious shop is anchored by a wall of gourmet dry goods — pasta, oils, vinegar, pickles, and such — on one side, and a pair of cold-cases on the other: one with a well-kept assortment of cheese, and another displaying surprisingly robust charcuterie options. The entire center of the store is given over to rack upon rack of wines.
Both of the owners, Bob and Kristin, welcomed me within minutes. When Kristin found out I was a first-time customer, she offered the “nickel tour”, a full circuit of their various wares, complete with an explanation of the cheese case schematic ( “East Coast artisans on the left, West Coast on the right, Europe on the lower shelf…”) — an obsessive after my own heart, to be sure.
Bob talked about their groceries and salumi offerings, including a half-dozen varieties of Fra’Mani sausage… but nothing from Armandino, alas, due to problems getting their orders filled correctly. He also went to great pains to tell me that everything in the store was hand-selected. They were both adorably proud of their shop, and rightly so.
My only gripe — and it’s a very small one — is that they keep all of their cheeses and meats under plastic, both in the display cases, and when wrapped for you to take home. I’m guessing it’s difficult to keep artisanal products properly hydrated in the desert climate otherwise, and everything looked and tasted just fine, so perhaps I’m just being irrationally persnickety.
This corner of Henderson’s awfully far from The Strip to make Valley Cheese & Wine a side trip for most visitors, but if you happen to be making your escape at Green Valley Ranch or any of the Lake Las Vegas resorts, it’s definitely worth a long browse. Just be sure to bring a map.
Valley Cheese & Wine
1770 Horizon Ridge Parkway
Henderson, NV 89012
702.341.8191
shopping, Vegas, wine & bubbly
2 Comments »
Posted by Anita on 12.18.06 1:05 PM
Still searching for the perfect holiday gift? I’ve got a few ideas for you that I guarantee won’t just collect dust, or get relegated to the re-gifting shelf.
First off, a cool little idea called Giftybox. The Classes & Workshop Giftybox ($49) includes a pass to a workshop — including food- and drink-related classes at Seattle’s Culinary Communion and San Francisco’s Compassionate Cooks, among others across the country — plus nice discounts at five other locations of the recipient’s choice.
If you’ve got a better handle on your giftee’s tastes, you might opt instead for the Wine Tour & Tasting Giftybox ($59), with options for California, Washington, Oregon, New York and other wine-producing regions. With this box, your lucky friend gets a gift pass for a winery tour & tasting of her choice, including a bottle of wine, plus tastings and discounts at 5 additional wineries in the region.
You can order either Giftybox as late as Tuesday morning (9am PST) to receive it by the 21st, via 2-day FedEx… plenty of time to wrap it up and sneak it under the tree.
If neither of these presents strikes your fancy, might I humbly suggest a gift that combines the warm, fuzzy glow of altruism with the dream-inducing rush of a lottery ticket? I’m sure you’ve already bought plenty of tickets for the Menu for Hope raffle — we’ve raised more than $25,000 already!! — but consider buying a handful for your friends and family.
A ticket makes a nice stocking-stuffer: Pick out a prize that suits your giftee’s personality, print out the page from the donor’s site with a note explaining you’ve bought a ticket on their behalf, and tuck it into a pretty envelope. (Sam explains it all much better at the bottom of this post.)
There are so many great prizes up for grabs, and some of them (not naming any names, ahem!) don’t have very many bids at all… so your odds of winning are incredibly good.
holidays & occasions, other blogs, shopping
1 Comment »
Posted by Anita on 12.17.06 8:39 PM
What’s your big holiday present this year? A fancy gadget? A new appliance? Maybe a fabulous cookbook? Not to brag, but I think I’ve got you beat: This year, our Christmas present to each other is a full-fledged kitchen remodel.
We knew the second we stepped foot in the house that’s now ours — and saw the utter disaster that was the kitchen — that a gut-job was in order. (If you clicked that link, I feel compelled to tell you that was the previous owners’ idea of tidying up for an open house.) But for the last 18 months, we’ve had more pressing remodel issues to tackle, and we also spent nearly 6 months working with a very talented architect to get all of our ‘must-have’ and ‘really-want’ items into one room while staying reasonably close to our original budget. But it’s gonna happen, boys and girls — it’s gonna happen soon.
January 2 is our scheduled start date, the day the big Irish guys show up with sledgehammers and dust masks and a big-ass Dumpster. And since this project includes not just our kitchen but also our master bathroom, we’re movin’ on down to the basement. Happily, like many SF houses, our “basement” is really the ground floor of our house, opening onto the backyard.
For the last year and a half, this space has served as our guest suite, home office, and music studio. Over the last month, we’ve worked with our kitchen contractor to turn part of it into our new laundry room and craft workshop (finally — a place for all those canning jars and infusion bottles!), a space that will serve as our makeshift kitchen during the remodel. Hence, the photo above: Our pantry-china cabinet-appliance garage-bar.
As you might imagine, I’m coping with the chaos by writing lists: A list of appliances we’ll need (toaster oven, yes. rice cooker, yes. coffeepot, yes. ice-cream maker? not so much), a list of one-dish suppers we can make in our screwball cafe… and another list of nearby restaurants that deliver.
I keep telling myself that our temporary home is larger than many apartments where we’ve lived over the years, and (sadly) that we actually have more counter space in the laundry room than we had in the old kitchen. My first college apartment lacked a kitchen entirely, and yet I cooked quite respectably — even for parties — using a microwave and a hotplate, washing dishes in the tub. Surely I can do at least as well with my current set of skills and resources. If all else fails, I’ll remember my mantra: “It’s only temporary.”
In addition to the contents of the server closet cabinet above, we’ll also have our gas grill on the deck, an incredibly expensive toaster oven, a coffee maker, and (temporarily) a big washtub in the bathroom — the kind you see in laundry rooms, but right in the shower.
cooking, equipment, holidays & occasions, kitchen
6 Comments »
Posted by Anita on 12.15.06 6:49 AM
I’ve had the idea in my head for this drink for a while, but never got around to putting it together. For one thing, I was at a bit of a loss as to how to get all the various flavors I wanted to combine into alcoholic form.
I wanted to create a drink that offered the lushness of pears with the punch of ginger — a classic combo, to be sure. Although I knew I could make (or buy) ginger-flavored simple syrup, I was worried that so much sugar would push the cocktail in a sicky-sweet direction… definitely not my style, especially as I wanted to build off the flavors of my favorite Belle de Brillet pear cognac.
I consulted with my friend Sean — who knows his way around infusions — but he confessed that his sole attempt at ginger vodka turned out rather blah.
While browsing the baking aisle in the last few weeks before Christmas, an idea struck me: What about infusing vodka with candied ginger, rather than fresh? The flavor’s already concentrated by the candying process, and the little bit of sugar coating the chunks would dilute in the final mix.
So, I took about 3 ounces of candied ginger chunks, and covered them with a cup of vodka in a lidded jar. After the first day, I was worried — the ginger smelled like pine-scented kitchen cleaner, and the vodka tasted sharp and acid. Ugh. I set the jar aside, and resolved to try another route, after the holidays.
The next morning, I shook the jar, mostly out of idleness. And what do you know: As I rattled the ginger against the glass, I noticed dark, syrupy threads diluting into the vodka. Hm! A quick taste test showed we were definitely making progress. By yesterday morning — 3 days after starting the infusion — the mixture actually tasted like something you’d want to drink.
Last night, I decided to try a test run: Belle de Brillet and candied-ginger vodka stirred with ice, then strained into a tasting glass. Both the pear and the ginger seemed overpowering… but what about that bottle of bubbly in the fridge? I poured the mixed liquors into a small cocktail glass, and topped them with a float of the sparkling wine. Success! The dryness and effervessence neatly cut the sugar and the strong flavors, making for a lovely cocktail with a hint of sweetness and a kick of spice.
The Gilded Pear
1-1/2 oz. Belle de Brillet pear-cognac
1 ounce candied-ginger vodka
sparkling wine
Stir the cognac and the ginger vodka in a bar glass with ice; then strain into a small cocktail glass. Top with the sparkling wine.
Drink of the Week, preserving & infusing, recipes, wine & bubbly
10 Comments »
Posted by Anita on 12.13.06 6:37 AM
When I heard that this month’s Wine Blogging Wednesday would tackle non-Champagne sparkling wines, I realized that we had the perfect excuse to crack open a bottle of bubbly this week.
Friday marks the fifth anniversary of the evening when That Cute Bald Guy asked me to marry (…with dinner) him. I’m sure we drank plenty of sparkling wine that night, although the details of its origin are lost to the mists of time. But I do have one particular memory of that winter’s wedding planning.
As we sorted through all the wedding details, we realized we had no idea which bubbly we could afford to serve to a crowd without sending our wine-snob friends rushing for the exits. So, we did what any budding foodies would do: We bought a few dozen bottles of under-$20 sparklers, whipped up some nibbles, and invited a gaggle of friends over to help us taste.
As you might expect, we had a blast. In the end, there were plenty of very nice bottles consumed, but a clear winner emerged. And so, the bubbly with which our friends and family toasted our vows the next summer was the Roederer Estate Brut ($17 at BevMo). As an added charm, this bubbly’s made with grapes grown in Sonoma’s Anderson Valley, right around the corner from the vineyards where we were married.
And although it’s affordable enough to serve to scores of your nearest and dearest, it’s also become our house sparkler, a little touch of luxury that’s fun to keep on hand just for ourselves. It’s delightful with a thimbleful of liqueur as an aperitif, mixed into Mimosas for brunch, or as a little splash of holiday sparkle all on its own.
Keep a bottle on hand, and I’m sure you’ll find something lovely to celebrate…
holidays & occasions, other blogs, wine & bubbly
6 Comments »
Posted by Anita on 12.11.06 7:00 AM
No need to book a plane ticket, or shop for an expensive hotel room. As part of this year’s Menu for Hope food blogger charity raffle, “Married …with Dinner” will send one lucky winner everything she needs to take a foodie’s tour of the San Francisco Bay Area from the comfort of her own kitchen!
Your “Armchair Food Tour of the San Francisco Bay Area” includes taste-tempting treats from four Northern California counties.
The first stop on our tour is San Francisco, where we pick up:
– a copy of the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market cookbook
– a 4.25-oz holiday ornament filled with assorted Ghirardelli chocolates
We cross the bay to Berkeley, and sample:
– a 3/4-pound bag of Peet’s Coffee limited-edition Holiday Blend
– a 13.5-oz. jar of Scharffen Berger Pure Dark Ganache Chocolate Sauce
– an 8-oz. pot of June Taylor Blackberry Conserve
Then over the Golden Gate Bridge to the Wine Country, where we find:
– a 1-pound bag of Rancho Gordo “Ojo de Tigre” heirloom beans
– a 12.5-oz. bottle of Sonoma Syrup Company’s Eureka Lemon simple syrup
The total value of this gourmet gift basket is more than $75! Your winning bid includes FREE shipping to any address in the continental US. [If you live beyond the 48 states, we’ll foot bill for shipping up to $25. Please contact chef (at) marriedwithdinner (dot) com and we’ll estimate shipping charges for you, if you’re interested.]
This raffle prize is CODE UW-34. (Write that down… you’ll need it later.)
Enough of all that!! How do you qualify to win this glorious prize? It’s SOOO simple:
- Check out the other cool items available on Becks & Posh, and Chez Pim. (We know you want OUR prize, but you might want to bid on others, too … you generous foodie, you.)
- Go to the donation page for Menu for Hope III. This year, funds raised will go to support the United Nation’s World Food Programme.
-
Make a donation! Each $10 pledge will give you one virtual raffle ticket toward a prize of your choice. Please specify which prize or prizes you’d like in the ‘Personal Message’ section in the donation form when confirming your donation. Don’t forget to mention how many tickets you want to allot per prize, and please use the prize code — for example, a donation of $50 can buy 2 tickets for UW-01 and 3 for UW-34 (our prize, natch).
- If your company matches your charity donations, please remember to check the appropriate box on your submission and fill in the information so Menu for Hope can claim the corporate match.
- Please also check the box that allows the contest gurus to see your email address so that they can contact you in case you win. Your email address will not be shared with anyone.
- Check back on Chez Pim on January 15, when Pim will announce the result of the entire raffle. (We’ll also announce the winner of the Armchair Food Tour here.)
Good luck to all! And thanks for helping support a worthy cause.
cookbooks, other blogs, shopping
5 Comments »
Posted by Anita on 12.08.06 7:49 AM
The Spirit World’s hosting this month’s edition of MxMo, with the theme of “cocktails for a festive occasion” — holiday-themed drinks that, ideally, can be made in bulk, ahead of time, and that guests can pour themselves.
This one’s easy: I love eggnog, and I don’t even mind the stuff that comes in a carton at the megamart. When winter rolls around, I keep a quart on hand in the fridge, and it makes a good option (minus the strengthening shot of booze, of course) for those mornings when I don’t have time for real breakfast.
The custardy eggnog below is a variation of a Cook’s Illustrated recipe. It’s a little more complicated than a standard eggnog where you simply whisk everything together, but it yields a more luscious drink… and one that’s a lot less prone to grossing out your guests than eggnogs that use raw eggs (and leave slimy dregs in your glass).
I’ve halved the original recipe, which made 12 exceedingly rich servings. (I like eggnog, but not with every meal for a week…) Even so, the recipe is still good for a small crowd; feel free to double it, should your guest list require.
Velvet Eggnog
3 large eggs
1 egg yolk
1/4 cup + 1T granulated sugar
pinch table salt
2 cups whole milk
1/4 cup spiced rum or brandy
1-1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg, plus extra for garnish
1/4 tsp allspice
1/4 cup heavy cream, whipped to soft peaks, plus extra for garnish
Whisk the eggs, yolk, sugar and salt in a heavy medium saucepan. Stir in the milk gradually, blending well. Turn the heat to low and stir contantly until custard thickens and lightly coats the back of a spoon, approximately 25 minutes.
Pour the custard through a fine seive into a large bowl. Cool to room temperature by stirring gently, preferably over a cold-water bath. Stir in the booze and other seasonings. Cover tightly and refrigerate at least 3 hours.
Before serving, fold the whipped cream into the custard mixture. Serve, garnished with a dollop of whipped cream and grated nutmeg.
Makes six 1/2-cup servings.
Note: Feel free to make this recipe ahead for parties — the eggnog keeps in a well-chilled fridge for up to 3 days, and the flavors improve with time.
Drink of the Week, drinks, entertaining, holidays & occasions, Mixology Monday, other blogs, recipes
5 Comments »
Posted by Anita on 12.05.06 6:59 AM
No, not the brewpub… The constitutional thingie.
As described by The Cocktail Chronicles, tonight’s the night to celebrate Repeal Day…
…the fabulous new drink holiday proposed by Jeffrey Morgenthaler to commemorate the end of the “noble experiment,” the 13-year drought known as Prohibition. On December 5, 1933, the 18th Amendment was repealed and Americans could again legally tipple for the first time since 1919. […] Celebrate Repeal Day this December 5 by drinking — well, whatever you like, if for no other reason (as Morgenthaler says), “just because you can.”
Might we suggest a 1930s favorite, such as the Aviation? (Please, no bathtub gin…) Or perhaps cocktail based on rye, the American whiskey that Prohibition nearly killed off? Or, as suggested in this month’s newsletter from the Zig Zag, the Scofflaw, a drink named after those who scorned enforced abstinence?
bar culture, drinks, holidays & occasions, other blogs
1 Comment »
