Category Archives: de cibo

Mexican porn: Bahia adds tortilla soup to its menu

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Above: Bahia Don Bravo’s new Tortilla Soup was too sexy to resist. No trip home to La Jolla where I grew up is complete without a visit to Bahia.

Tracie B and I returned late last night to Austin from San Diego where we met a lot of great people, poured and tasted a lot of great wine at the SD Natural Wine Summit, and caught up with mama Judy, the German Professor, and the Cheese Hater’s mom over dinner at Jaynes Gastropub (yes, even on my night off, I ate there, that’s how much I love it).

Above: Owner Carlos Bravo aka Don Bravo was in the kitchen on Monday when we stopped in with mama Judy for lunch. The carnitas were particularly delicate and tasty, moist and rich on the tongue.

I’ve got a lot of really cool posts on deck, including more from the Natural Wine Summit, a wonderful toasty vintage grower’s champagne shared by a dear friend, and some old and very special traditional-style Sangiovese from one of the most famous producers of Brunello di Montalcino.

Above: Who ever thought beans could be so seductive?

It’s 8 a.m. and I’ve already been at my computer since 6:30, trying to catch up. So I’ll make this post a quickie.

On deck for tomorrow: “Good wine lovers go to heaven, bad wine lovers go back stage.”

In other news…

Excerpts of an interview with Franco — on recent developments in Montalcino — appeared in The New York Times today — cartaceous version. Read it while it’s hot! (And you can read the entire interview here.)

BBQ porn: the Salt Lick, Driftwood, Texas

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I’ve been investigating the story behind the inexplicable Decanter post that appeared on Friday and I’ll hope to have some answers tomorrow. In the meantime, enough with this mishegas… it’s Sunday and time for something fun…

*****

BrooklynGuy may give me a bad case of Pinot Noir envy, but when it comes to bbq, I got his number…

The Salt Lick
18300 FM Rd 1826
Driftwood TX 78619
512-858-4959

My work situation has changed recently (and happily) and I’m back to my life as an amanuensis of wine. One of my new clients takes me down to Driftwood, in the Texas Hill Country (about 23 miles southwest of Austin), where there are number of locally owned wineries. After a meeting the other day, I FINALLY ate at the famed Salt Lick.

Folks are pretty serious about their barbecue out here in Texas and the Salt Lick is widely considered one of the best.

I ordered the mixed plate (in the photo above) and frankly, I was a little disappointed with the brisket, which, as the smoke ring reveals, was evenly smoked but was dry and not tender. But the ribs were — hands down — among the best I’ve ever had and so was the sausage. The former, done in the Memphis style, basted with tangy barbecue sauce as it was smoked, fell apart on the bone. The latter was juicy and tender and the casing cracked deliciously.

I loved the German-style potato salad and the coleslaw was truly homemade, fresh and crunchy and not too saucy. But the thing that takes the Salt Lick from A to A+ was the setting (above), in the beautiful Texas Hill Country. Driftwood retains that western trail, cowboy feel, and the staff was informed friendly and gracious, making the Salt Lick a must-visit. They allow BYOB as well. Nebbiolo anyone? Or maybe some Lambrusco before the summer ends…

Happy Sunday, y’all!

Lacan, Petrarch, Nietzsche, Fiorano, and hieroglyphic wine

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Above: I love this image of the 1994 Malvasia by Fiorano, snapped by Tracie B in her apartment the other day. It’s a quasi-film-noir take on a hard-to-wrap-your-mind-around wine. One of the things that intrigues us about wine is its mystery: who made it and how and why? A glass of wine can be like Lacan’s hieroglyphs in the dessert.

Twentieth-century linguist, semiotician, and father of late-blooming French psychoanalysis Jacques Lacan famously asked his readers to consider how they would react in the following situation (perhaps a great premise for an ersatz reality show?):

    Suppose that in the desert you find a stone covered with hieroglyphics. You do not doubt for a moment that, behind them, there was a subject who wrote them. But it is an error to believe that each signifier is addressed to you — this is proved by the fact you cannot understand any of it. On the other hand, you define them as signifiers, by the fact that you are sure that each of the signifiers is related to each of the others.

(This passage is often cited in explaining Lacan’s theory of the “precedence of the signifier,” in other words, the notion that the word or symbol or sign always exists before meaning does.)

In some ways, protohumanist Francis Petrarch said the same thing when he wrote that as a young man, he could read Roman orator Cicero’s writing and he was enchanted by the words, their sounds, and their elegance, even though he could not (yet) understand what they meant.

Above: Tracie B’s contribution to our dinner Saturday at Italian Wine Guy’s was her excellent carbonara. It paired stunningly with the vibrant 92 Fiorano Semillon. Carbonara is another example of a trace of the past that has lost its meaning. No one knows for sure the origins of the dish or they etymon of its name.

As with literature and writing (even writing on the wall), we sometimes assign meaning to things not because we know the meaning intended by their authors or creators but because we simply come into contact with them. Nietzsche wrote about this in The Twilight of the Idols as “the error of imaginary causes,” as in dreams, when, for example, external stimulus (like a canon shot, as Nietzsche put it, or perhaps the song playing on a radio alarm clock) enters our subconscious:

    The ideas engendered by a certain condition have been misunderstood as the cause of that condition. We do just the same thing, in fact, when we are awake.

What do any of these things have to do with one another, beyond me stringing together a seemingly arbitrarily compiled handlist of philosophical and epistemological musings?

Every wine wine we approach and draw to our lips is a mystery, a riddle of the Sphinx. Every glass of wine is Lacan’s desert hieroglyph, Petrarch’s Cicero, and Nietzsche’s waking dream — ay, there’s the rub… And so were the three bottles of Fiorano white that Tracie B and I opened with Italian Wine Guy over the weekend as our birthday gift to him (and a thank you for all that he’s done for both of us, professionally and personally, over the last two years).

Above: Deciphering Fiorano through the prism of Italian Wine Guy aka Alfonso’s superb stemware, paired with his take on petto di pollo alla milanese. Photo by Tracie B.

A great deal has been written about the fascinating wines of Fiorano (Eric’s 2004 article was the first piece about these wines in English) but I think that Eric put it best when he called them “bygone wines”: they are wines that will never be made again. In part because wine is no longer produced in that fashion on the Fiorano estate (outside Rome) and in part because today, few if any would ever consider making white wines intended for such prolonged barrel aging. They are a trace of another time and era in winemaking. They are “classic” inasmuch as they will never be made again. They are a mystery, a conundrum that keeps us thinking. We know they exist and have existed (and we will know that even after we have drunk them all). We know someone made them but we will probably never know what he meant by them.

All we do know for certain is that they’re delicious.

She wrote the book on chicken fried steak

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From the “life could be worse” department…

jeremy parzen

Above: Despite Tom G’s admonitions, I went ahead and ate the Chicken Fried Steak on Sunday. After all, it’s not every day that you get to eat CFS made by the woman who wrote the Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink entry on CFS and it’s not every day that you get to pair it with Chateau Clerc-Milon 1990 (Pauillac, 5th growth). Thanks, Kim and Alfonso! Photo by Alfonso Cevola.

Sunday found me and Tracie B in the home of IWG where his SO (significant other), the lovely and immensely talented food writer Kim Pierce, shared a meal of chicken fried steak and yellow summer squash casserole (by Kim) and mashed potatoes (by Tracie B) with us. Food critic Leslie Brenner, her husband, and their son were also in attendance. Her son showed me how to play the intro to Aerosmith’s “Dream On” on guitar and Kim graciously shared the text of her entry in the Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink. Enjoy!

"Chicken Fried Steak"

By Kim Pierce

Chicken fried steak most likely developed as a way to make a tough cut of beef more palatable: The first step in preparation is pounding a cutlet to tenderize it. Then, mimicking the technique for Southern fried chicken, it is either dredged in flour or dipped in batter before being fried in hot oil in a cast-iron skillet. A cream, or milk, gravy made from the drippings is spooned on top.

Above: “Chicken fried steak most likely developed as a way to make a tough cut of beef more palatable” and is prepared by dredging cube steak in flour and then frying it. My good friend Jon Erickson and I both call our dads “cube steak”: they’re of the generation too young to have fought in the Second World War but old enough to remember it and as a result, they’re obsessed with WWII folklore and factoids. My dad was 12 when it ended (he turned 76 yesterday) and the one time he ate at Jaynes Gastropub (owned by Jon and his wife Jayne), he said it was good but that he preferred “cube steak” — a classic entrée for his generation. Photo by Tracie B.

There are several theories about chicken fried steak’s origins. One holds that it developed in cattle country — Texas and the Midwest — before beef was as tender as it is today. Another holds that it descended from Wienerschnitzel, courtesy of the Germans who settled in Central Texas starting in the 1830s. Recipes resembling chicken fried steak are not uncommon in historical cookbooks. In The Kentucky Housewife (1839), a recipe for frying beef steaks starts with cutlets from the tough chuck and rump. It instructs the cook to “beat them tender, but do not break them or beat them into rags.” The cutlets are then dredged in flour and fried in “boiling lard.” Instructions for making a cream gravy follow.

Above: I’ve seen other versions of chicken fried steak where the meat is soaked in milk and is breaded before frying. Kim’s version, simply dredged in flour, was superbly tender — thanks to how well the meat was tenderized and the frying temperature (I believe). Photo by Tracie B.

Whatever its origins, chicken fried steak was well established in home kitchens by 1932, when a reader submitted a menu featuring “Chicken Fried Steak With Cream Gravy” to The Dallas Morning News. In 1936, the year of the Texas centennial, the same newspaper reported that the president of the Dallas Restaurant Men’s Association had received cards and letters from out-of-towners praising his and other restaurants: “To them a chicken-fried steak, smothered in brown, creamy gravy is the tops in foods.” The first known recipe that refers to Chicken Fried Steak by name appears in the Household Searchlight Recipe Book (1949), published in Topeka, Kansas. Country fried steak and chicken fried steak are sometimes used interchangeably.

Above: Chicken fried steak and nearly-twenty-year-old 5th growth Bordeaux for lunch. Life could be worse.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bryan, Mrs. Lettice. The Kentucky Housewife. Cincinnati: Shepard & Stearns, 1839.

Gee, Denise. “Dueling Steaks.” In Cornbread Nation 1: The Best of Southern Food Writing, edited by John Egerton for the Southern Foodways Alliance. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002.

Handbook of Texas Online, s.v. “GERMANS,” http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/BB/dibgi.html

Household Searchlight Recipe Book. Topeka, Kansas, 1949.

“Today’s Menu and Recipe.” The Dallas Morning News, November 8, 1932.

“Waiters in Dallas Restaurants Easily Spot Visitors to Fair By Differences in Their Ways.” The Dallas Morning News, August 10, 1936.

How I stay so thin

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From the “just for fun” department…

WARNING: GRAPHIC IMAGES FOLLOW!

jeremy parzenPeople ask me all the time how I stay so thin when I work in the food and wine industry and indulge — perhaps too often — in the hedonist pleasures of eating and drinking.

Yesterday, after the nth photo of a Jaynes Burger (my favorite dish at Jaynes Gastropub in San Diego) appeared on my blog, Tom G commented and noted: “You need a dietician, you return to Cali and go for the Burger and fries in the land of fresh fish and veggies, better lay off that Chicken fried steak for a week. I also think you need an extra dose of red wine.”

Tom, thanks for the comment and for the genuine concern. Unfortunately, Tracie B and I are headed to Dallas for a Saturday evening and lazy Sunday of unusual wines and chicken fried steak “prepared with native yeasts” by Italian Wine Guy. So, the diet will have to wait until next week.

Above: Cake tasting for our wedding celebration in La Jolla. Tracie B wondered out loud: “wouldn’t it be great if you could spit at a cake tasting the way we [wine professionals] spit at a wine tasting?”

In fact, I do pay attention to my health (that’s me, above left, on tour with Nous Non Plus in May, poolside in San Jose before the show; Tracie B and I got engaged the next night after the show in LA!).

Above: On an account call in Arkansas for lunch, I asked our waiter for the restaurant’s “signature” dish and she brought me Frito Pie. Sometimes, as a food and wine professional, you find yourself in situations where you have to make unfortunate food choices and so it’s important to take care of oneself. The pie wasn’t so bad and I only ate a small portion of it. It did pair well with Primitivo.

I try to follow these simple rules:

  • I never eat when I’m not truly hungry;
  • I only eat at mealtimes, at most three times a day;
  • I never eat something that doesn’t truly appeal to me, even if I am hungry;
  • I try to eat as many leafy greens as I can;
  • I try (not as hard as I should) to stay physically active.

    • Above: California is the Golden State (not so much these days, actually, with its budget crisis) and Texas is the Lone Star State but Texas rivals California on any given Sunday for its gorgeous produce. I’ve found it’s easier to find farm-to-table produce here than in my home state and that farm-to-table isn’t limited to higher-end eateries. That’s the insalata mista at Dough Pizzeria in San Antonio.

    I do believe wholeheartedly (pun intended) that as food and wine professionals, we have a responsibility to project balance (aequitas) and good common sense in our daily lives and eating habits.

    Above: Ceviche, camaronillas, and grilled mahi mahi tacos at Bahia Don Bravo in Bird Rock, La Jolla (San Diego). Photo by Tracie B.

    When we go home to visit in La Jolla, Tracie B and I do tend to indulge in foods we can’t find here in Texas, Asian cuisine in particular. On this recent trip, I took mama Judy to lunch at Spicy City (an excellent Szechuan restaurant in Kearny Mesa, San Diego, highly recommended). Or the superior seafood (see above) we find at places like Bahia Don Bravo in Bird Rock (La Jolla) or Bay Park Fish Company on Mission Bay.

    I’m not sure what Italian Wine Guy has in store for us tonight but I know tomorrow’s “supper” will center around Kim’s (i.e., IWG’s SO’s) secret recipe for chicken fried steak.

    Stay tuned… There’s more food porn to come. Thanks for reading, everyone, and happy weekend!

    Post scriptum: with this post I’ve added a new category to Do Bianchi — de santitatis or on health.

    Gone fishin… Giant squid taco anyone?

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    Above: Tracie B gave me a pair of Fender Stratocaster head-stock cuff links as an early present for my birthday this year. The last year has been one of the best of my life… Meeting Tracie B and moving to Austin… but more on that tomorrow… :-)

    Today is my birthday and so I’m taking the day off… goin’ fishin’, so to speak.

    In the meantime, I’m going to relish every last drop of anticipation for the 1999 Barbaresco Santo Stefano by Giacosa that Tracie B is treating me to tonight to celebrate…

    In other news… holy giant squid taco Batman!

    In all my years growing up in La Jolla, I never saw anything like this. The video below was shot just a stone’s throw from where I lived as a kid and not far from where my mom and brother and his family live still. Amazing…

    Frank Bruni please call me: recent pizza (and panna cotta) porn here in Texas

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    Above: Doug Horn at Dough in San Antonio consistently delivers what I think is the most authentic Neapolitan pizza in the U.S. (Photos by Tracie B).

    Pizza is hot. No pun intended: for the last few months, pizza has been one of the hottest topics in the food and wine media — from Dr V’s post on the forbidden pizza-wine pairing earlier this year to Eric’s astute observations on the “wine and pizza debate” in May, from Alan Richman’s controversial list of his top 25 pizzerias in the U.S., also published in May, to Frank Bruni’s article in The Times yesterday about the “cult” of artisanal pizza in this country.

    Above: Skewered mozzarella at Dough, wrapped in prosciutto and grilled at Dough. Has the mimetic desire kicked in yet?

    I recently took Tracie B to try the pizza at Doug Horn’s Dough in San Antonio. I had eaten there a few times and was consistently and repeatedly impressed by the authenticity of the pies. It was time to call in the expert: after all, Tracie B lived in Ischia outside of Naples for nearly five years. She KNOWS her authentic Neapolitan pizza. She was duly impressed and suffice it say that we will soon be back.

    Above: Self-Portrait in a Convex Spoon? I think I just gave myself an idea for this week’s Sunday Poetry. Doug’s panna cotta is as good as it gets. I told Doug that his panna cotta was one of the best I’d tasted outside of Italy and one of the best ever tasted, really. “I know,” he responded dryly. This guy doesn’t kid around.

    As American writers, bloggers, foodies, celebrity restaurateurs, and food pundits and critics continue to argue the finer points of authentic Neapolitan pizza, few have taken note of Naples’s recent celebration of the 120th anniversary of the birth of the Pizza Margherita, which was created using the three colors of the Italian flag to commemorate Queen Margherita of Savoy’s visit to Naples in 1889. For the occasion, the city of Naples reenacted the parade held to welcome the queen to the once Parthenopaean Republic.

    I found this YouTube of the event, worth watching if just for the costumes. Enjoy! And Frank, please call me! There’s great pizza in Texas, too!

    Good as Fiumicino: Andrew Weissman’s Il Sogno slated to open July 25 in San Antonio

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    andrew weissman

    Above: “As good as Fiumicino.” That’s what Chef Andrew Weissman told me this morning when he made me an espresso at his new Italian restaurant Il Sogno in San Antonio, meaning that it tastes as good as that first espresso you crave and drink as soon as you get off the plane in Rome. He wasn’t kidding.

    This morning found the San Diego Kid leading an Italian wine seminar and tasting for the staff at Il Sogno in San Antonio, Chef Andrew Weissman’s new Italian restaurant, slated to open July 25 in the old Pearl Brewery complex in downtown.

    The wine list will have about 100 wines and lot of great values. I was really liking the 2007 Barbera by Giacosa (despite the current “fatwa,” as Franco has called it, that the winery has issued on the 2006) and the 2007 Produttori del Barbaresco Langhe Nebbiolo, which they told me would be about $35 on the list.

    il sogno

    Above: Kinda looks like a Pink Floyd album cover, doesn’t it? The old Pearl Brewery complex in San Antonio is about to become one of the hottest food and wine destinations in central Texas.

    Beyond the guided tasting I led and the “as good as Fiumicino” espresso Andrew made me, I didn’t get to taste any food but judging the from the cheese expert who followed me, Il Sogno is going to be as good as Andrew’s flagship restaurant, Le Rêve (click to read about the night we I ate there). Tracie B and I are entirely and totally geeked…

    The sweetest reward: one of the best figs I have ever eaten

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    francesco secchi

    Above: Sardinian-born Francesco Secchi, owner of the Ferrari Italian Villa chain in Dallas grows all of his own herbs, including Sardinian mirto (myrtle). Who needs Viagra?

    It’s getting to be that time of year that people start bragging about their fig trees. There are those who brag and those who deliver.

    Italian Wine Guy and I had dinner last night with clients of mine, Francesco Secchi and his son Stefano (below), owners of Ferrari Italian Villa in Grapevine (Dallas). The food was very good, but the figs… aaaaaaahhhhh the figs… the figs wrapped in perfectly sliced prosciutto were FANTASTIC. The 30-minute trip from Downtown Dallas to Grapevine (where Stefano presides over the kitchen) is a small price to pay for this paradisiacal experience. I highly recommend the wood-fired flatbread and antipasti misti. (It’s so hard to find well-sliced prosciutto, btw, anywhere in the U.S. and I was thoroughly impressed by Stefano’s deft hand at the slicer.)

    stefano secchi

    In other news, I’d like to thank the academy…

    Our friend Howard and fellow lover of natural wine has been inducted into the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences! Mazel tov, Howard! I can’t believe you’d join a club that would have you as a member!

    AND…

    Jaynes Gastropub was named one of the top 5 gastropubs in the U.S., together with the Linkery (also in San Diego) and the Spotted Pig (NYC). Not too shabby, mates! And they said this whole gastropub thing would never take off! ;-)

    Btw, I’ll be announcing some very exciting news about me, Tracie B, and Jaynes in just a day or so… stay tuned…

    In other other news…

    After running a wine dinner in San Antonio on Monday night and then working the market all day yesterday and today in Dallas, I cannot wait to get home to my super fine lady, the lovely Tracie B, tonight. Her nachos and some natural and stinky old natural Dolcetto di Dogliani happily await me. Life could be worse…

    tracie branch

    BYOB Trailer Park Tacos, Soave, and Sangiovese

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    Above: Tracie B and me’s favorite wine to pair with Torchy’s trailer park tacos is Inama Soave. It has just enough richness in the mouthfeel to wrap itself around the intense flavors of the spicy pork and salsa.

    It’s summertime in Texas and that can mean only one thing: BYOB trailer park tacos.

    After we watched The Hangover at a matinee yesterday (hilarious, especially the raunchy closing credits), we headed out to spend the steamy summer evening with Tracie B’s childhood friend Jennifer and her husband CJ (check out their cool wedding photography blog), munching on chips and salsa and tacos, sipping Soave and Sangiovese at the Trailer Park Eatery in Austin — trailer park dining world capital.

    Above: One of the trailers at the Trailer Park Eatery makes tacos, one makes burgers, and one makes S’mores — yes, S’mores. How’s that for an impossible wine pairing Dr. V?

    Inama Soave is always one of our favorite pairings for BYOB tacos because of its bright acidity but also because it has a certain richness and unctuousness to the mouthfeel that wraps around the texture of steaming hot, soft corn tortilla stuffed with juicy roast pork and delivers ineffable pleasure.

    I also thought the 2003 Villa di Vetrice Chianti Rufina Riserva showed well. I was a little hesitant to buy this wine: I’ve had too many 03s from Tuscany that are too stewy. But this wine was a beauty: 100% Sangiovese, grown at proper elevations (your ears pop as you drive up to Rufina), and vinified in a traditional manner. Great acidity, great plummy fruit, and lightness in body balanced by tannin that I just can’t resist. Both of these wines retail for under $20, btw, perfect for BYOB tacos.

    There’s no doubt about it: Austin has some of the best Mexican food I’ve ever eaten — from the haute to the bas.