Sustainable as a Theme

Dining in all the fabulous restaurants in the big cities like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles or San Francisco, you can find a wide array of themes. You can find facilities with Nuevo Latino, Italian, French, Dim Sum… classic themes like these, while some restaurants rock the latest trend, which could be whatever the Food Network has told America. With the somewhat recent release of Al Gore’s film The Inconvenient Truth, rising gas prices, and rocky economy, creative marketing has become a very sought after skill. Other informative and mind-opening media pieces such as Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me or Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma have caused the food industry to reevaluate the way food is sold. Corporate food chains display bright banners with words like ‘organic’ or ‘fresh’ embossed across the packaging that is ‘biodegradable.’  T.V. commercials or ads are bright and coupled with a kitschy soda-pop soundtrack to lure our unsuspecting youth.

Coming out of culinary school, I wanted to shape the industry and show everyone something they hadn’t seen before.  Armed with my new piece of paper that told me and everyone else that I knew how to make hollandaise and butcher salmon, I was led to believe I was going to get my face on the covers of Saveur, Food & Wine or possibly my own cookbook. However, what I wanted to show the world was prepackaged and the same thing that the instructors at the school had spoon-fed to many other students like me. I was left with something that was not new and lacked my soul and any real foundation, and my quest to invent something new must begin. Luckily I came to the realization that the old way of doing food, the really old way, was and is still the right way. Restaurants, hotels and cooks of households in rural towns shopped in the market square that we know now as the Farmer’s Market and prepared what was available to them at the market. The geographic location of where you lived dictated what was available to you. For example: if you lived on the coast, the ocean’s treasures were there for you. If you lived in the mountains, goat, rabbit and cattle might more likely make an appearance on your menu. Of course the geographic location with its soil content and climate also affected what produce was available to you.  Living in California I am fortunate as I have a huge array of vegetables and fruit here for my picking, as well as the most expansive coastline in the U.S. and several fresh water resources to fish from.  Within a hundred mile radius all of these things are at my fingertips. The proximity eliminates the gas consumed to deliver any nonlocal product, and ensures freshness.

As a cook I want to serve foods that taste good and are exciting, but at what cost?  Should I be serving pumpkin in the middle of spring? Or should I be flying in halibut from Alaska if I have fresh California halibut available? These don’t support my local economy or help my environment by flying or driving a product hundreds or even thousands of miles away to reach my table. As a consumer, these questions should be asked: Where did my vegetables come from? How is it that I am having English peas in the middle of fall?  It’s spring, how or why am I enjoying figs?  Is it that these things do not matter?  Of course they do! Neither is available in those seasons.  Again this goes back to the classic way of doing things. Foods should only be prepared while they are seasonally available. Now of course with modern developments like planes, trains and refrigeration, people in South Dakota can get fresh tomatoes, avocados or mangoes and in the blistering cold winter.  Again, at what cost?

For me, I like having the ability to visit with the farmer and ask him or her what is on hand as well as what will be coming on line in the next few months. Sure, its fabulous to be able to display exotic items from far off places and sit in a dining room that looks like it was pieced together from a town in the La Mancha region of Spain, but again at what cost?

So now with a few years of industry realities under my toque, I have developed an idea of what the world needs to see (and I strongly emphasize the word, needs).  With a cynical but very realist chef as a boss and mentor showing me the way as a young epicurean, I have realized that yeah, all the million dollar restaurants with chefs who have their names embroidered across their chests and dining rooms designed by GQ’s top rated interior designers are great but what are they doing for the community in which they reside? How are they giving back? Being in a small town versus a large city, this point is far more important in the birthing years because you do not have the masses to visit your establishment and pay your bills.  However, in the grand scheme of things if more restaurants decided to only buy local either from fishmongers, cheese mongers, cattlemen or farmers, the local agricultural economy would thrive and allow for growth and security instead of being outsourced from a stranger hundreds of miles away.  And come on, isn’t nice to know where your beef came from and not just seeing a picture of your happy cow in a green pasture chewing on some grass behind a wood fence? FYI, I have decided that Happy Cows come from Cayucos. Just look at that view!

Happy cows come from Cayucos

The beauty of this concept of Local, Organic & Sustainable is that any cuisine can fit this mold. It’s this simple if an ingredient is missing in order for your cuisine to be completed you either do away with the recipe or the cuisine as a hole. Don’t get me wrong, I love having all the Chinese, Thai, Indian or Italian restaurants around to dine at but just imagine how much better they would be if they were based in their proper environment. This idea allows for a fresh menu that correlates with what is fresh that day. This is so cutting edge because now the cook is faced with a challenge to prepare something what is available now and not with a set of ingredients he or she is so used to having readily available due to modern logistic capabilities. Could there be a better market for the consumer? Farmers, ranchers and fishmongers working hand-in-hand with chefs to bring the consumer the freshest product available?

The very idea has sparked my appetite.

Summer Treasures

Once again the walk-in refrigerators of Villa Creek have been graced with the presence of beautiful summer treasures. As I step into the cool frigid air and lay my eyes upon the shelves I see unbelievable produce and dream of dishes to prepare for patrons. Flats filled with juicy strawberries, blueberries, black mission figs, cherries and raspberries all brought to us from the Bay area via one of our organic, sustainable and local purveyors Veritable Vegetable. In addition to those juicy fruits we try to provide on the table some local treats featured on a number of our plates such as the Cheese Plate, Shepherd’s Plate, Fruit Plate, Fresh Berry Gratinado and a couple other dessert items. Some berries from closer to home are blackberries and boysenberries that are without a doubt the best I’ve ever had. When they arrive from Four Elements Organics, located in Atascadero, I look at the flat and try not to consume too many while thinking of new and creative ways to use them. Though the best way to have them is just washed and popped in your mouth. Chef, gets on the staff for eating too much of them but its so hard when they are as good as these and when you see the tips of his fingers stained, just as yours, with the color of their incredible juice you smile inside knowing you can’t just walk by them without a taste. Its as if they are calling to you…eat me…eat me, I’m so tasty.

Not only has the kitchen tried to shove these amazing berries down your throats but so has the bar. If you find yourself at Villa Creek and are in dire need of a cocktail to unwind from the days pressures post up at the bar and let one of bartenders fix you a black berry mojito or some other concoction that will have you slip away into berry ecstasy.

If there is one thing you can be happy about last weeks intense heat is the beautiful summer treasures it has packed for us in little cardboard flats from our farmers, berries galore.

Rabbit with Mole Negro

Whether you are a local, regular or first time diner coming in this weekend you are in for a treat. We will be featuring our kitchen staff’s favorite Braised Rabbit with Sauteed Bloomsdale Spinach, Creamy Polenta and Mole Negro. We do this dish from time to time and has gained much popularity from its appearance on some of our previous menus. This dish speaks to someone who is either willing to try something new and go on a culinary adventure to the heart of Mexico or to a mole guru who expects something great from anyone bold enough to put it on their menu.  And Chef Tom has created just that a very robust mole that culminates to a sweet, spicy, chocolaty, nutty and fruity finish that will have you quite literally licking your plate. Obviously my opinion as the Sous Chef is quite biased and I think that everything we do is absolutely fantastic so don’t take my word for it, come in and try it for yourself. I will promise that you will not be disappointed. If you come in, tell you server to not even bother with the additions or the menu at all and say, “I’ll have the Rabbit.” I recommend a nice glass of Tempranillo or our Villa Creek Cellars Cuvee.   Enjoy!

Not the New Kids

Have you looked around lately?

Green is everywhere. Green is the new black. It’s what’s now. And it’s about time.

You see, we’ve been on this ride for years now, we haven’t been saying much about it, but now suddenly it’s cool. It’s a marketing tool.

Remember when America was on its “Fat Free” trip? And then suddenly you’d see little red stars on packages of dried fruit that boasted, “NOW FAT FREE!!” when we all knew that they were fat free to begin with? That’s kind of how we feel now promoting the same mission statement we’ve been standing by all along: Local, Sustainable, Organic.

So while we may not be the new kids on the block around here, we are at the very least seasoned veterans. And we’ll carry on with our original mission, but now maybe we’ll wave our flag a little higher.

Pop Tarts, Tainted Meat and Idol Chefs

Where to begin?

They serve Pop Tarts at schools. Did you know that? They serve them at schools in seemingly progressive areas in California. In the same zip code that organic farmers and Grass fed beef ranchers barely break even on a yearly basis doing the things they believe to be right, the School district has the unmitigated gall to serve “pop tarts” at the student run snack bar. Without a toaster. What is a Pop Tart? It certainly can’t be food. Is it a toaster candy bar that nods its head toward the fruits and vegetable block of the food pyramid? Or is it just another way we can further utilize the surplus corn that is grown in our fertile land in Middle America, to destroy the health of our youth.

I can’t tell which is more appalling to me; the way we underpay our teachers and overpay our politicians or the way we worship our Celebrity Chefs and yet pay no attention to the true heroes of the food industry, the farmers. Both are equally insipid, both equally damaging to our future and day to day life. But one seems obvious while the other is still cloaked in a perception of integrity. We can all agree that the crime of overpaying fat cats on the hill, whilst the mentors of our youth live in respective squalor is atrocious, and that it is so bogged down in the mire of bureaucracy and unions that we may never really find national solution. But do we really understand the idolatry involved in raising chefs to a level of god-like celebrity, and not really praise those who live on little or no profit to tip at windmills against the great corporate farming giants (seemingly in bed with the chemical companies, the pharmaceutical companies and the insurance companies. I like to call this the evil empire just to tip my hat to George Lucas).
We should be making TV shows about the Spencers of Windrose Farm or the Proprietors of T & D Willey. We should laude and write songs about the three visionary women who started Veritable Vegetable in the Bay area. Where are the parades and awards shows for sentries like Frank Lamacchia of PL Bar Ranch beef who raises smaller cattle on grass right up until they are respectfully loaded on trucks 6 at a time to go to slaughter at a local meat house. Or the Hearst corporation who funds the Hearst Ranch beef project that does the same thing, utilizing natural genetics to create tender beef not genetically modified corn slurries created by and funded by the evil empire. For that matter we could talk about even smaller ranchers Coco from Fair Oaks Beef who has gotten together with a rancher from New Zealand (a place much more spatially challenged than us) who together have been working on genetics and pasture management to create a more efficient use of land and resources to create their beef. Why are we not giving congressional medals to them? They seem to be more interested in our future than either the politicians, teachers unions or chefs. And these are only the farmers in my neck of the woods.

I don’t want you to get the impression that I am unaware of the relative handful of celebrity chefs that do speak about their farmers and are advocates for a better food system. But why are we not as outraged about the sneaky pop tart as we are the dairy cattle that are being abused (Again not to undermine the ethical treatment of livestock, I will be ranting on that next week). Because we are entirely too enamoured with ourselves. The media makes gods of lesser men and denies deity to those who truly are heroes. Because we can look to those who create tasty treats with things like corn syrup and pectin powder, bleached and enriched flour with such doe-eyed respect that we lose sight of what is real. That is how we justify pop tarts that say things like “real Fruit” and “all natural”. We are putting our respect and trust in the wrong people. Go to Your farmer ask him where and what you should eat. Or better yet ask him what your children should eat at school. Ask him why abused cattle are getting into the school food system and ask him how we as a nation of small communities can change what we are doing to our future. He will tell you what chefs are doing the right thing. She will tell you where and what to buy, and in my experience they tend to be less self-serving than the media chefs.

When you stray from what is real, when you no longer respect those who provide for your needs, you inevitably run the risk of allowing questionable slaughter practices and the sneaky pop tart into your life and your children’s schools.

Meet Your Meat

One of many reasons why we care so much about where your food comes from:

USDA Recalls 143 Million Pounds of Beef

More on this later…

Band of Brothers, Part Three

Part One

Part Two 

As in every battle, injuries did happen from time to time.  Despite all the preparation, planning and practice; the reality of the act provides what practice can not: pressure.  Pressure speeds things up causing a disruption in rhythm.  Popping grease and hot panhandles are booby traps set by friendlies and are sometimes forgotten about.  Once burnt, the fight does not stop: a shot of whiskey, quick bandage, self pep talk and back to the line for you.  Your team needs you and if you go down then the burden of dead weight being carried on already stacked shoulders can become overwhelming, and depending on your kitchen unforgiving.

It is said by the U.S Marine Corps that the best drilled and most disciplined unit wins the battle, and ultimately the war.  When not at war or on the front line practice is important as play.  A true cook does not stop cooking once leaving the threshold of his or her employment.  He is at home cooking meals for loved ones or long time friends that only read the reviews in papers about the various restaurants you have on your resume.  Now this is not the time to showboat or get carried away with high-rise plate ups.  Simple plate ups with well-executed technique and rich flavor will let all know you are a warrior in the kitchen, a true hero.  After your days off coming into work and sharing what you achieved at home with your comrades can be very enjoyable.  It is here where raw exchange of ideas are floating in the air waiting to be picked apart and used for a later date and brainstormed to fit your menu.

With all this talk of work one must not forget to play.  You work hard, you play hard.  This is the motto or code that line-cooks, pastry chefs, sous chefs and every other in the industry live by and generally accepted by onlookers and unbenounced to them fall victim to it every once in a while.  Eleven or eleven thirty is an hour most people have been out for an hour or more on a Friday or Saturday night, however the kitchen creatures are only starting to emerge out from their foxholes and dug-in positions where they were enduring fire from every direction just hours before.  Now it is their turn to wreak havoc.  Like Spartans who stood few against many and fought with expert timing, these line cooks will go till the last man standing, taking no prisoners.  Starting the day together honing knives and blathering about last night’s adventure and now at the day’s end reliving the hours spent.

Sleep is much deserved and is probably spent somewhere other then one’s own bed.  Unless it’s the night that everyone has decided to crash at your flat, on the living room floor, couch… raiding your empty fridge or nestled up against the porcelyn throne.  Heads are all down and some dream about fame and fortune while the cook runs through the prep list for the next day’s battle.  Fish, meat and produce are the last thoughts passing through their minds as they slip into an inebriated coma.  The sun shines, and the warriors awake disheveled emitting the aroma of last night’s cooking expedition and alcoholic induced escapade.  Despite the pounding headache and lack of real R.E.M sleep, chests are beaten by tough hands and the warriors’ cry is heard by all to announce his walk into the kitchen ready to do it all over again.

10 Things…

10 things I should be doing instead of blogging…

Welcome to my first blog entry.  Not easy from a person who spends 30 minutes editing one sentence emails.  Who am I?  JoAnn Cherry, mother of Camille (14), Henri (12), Villa Creek restaurant (10) and Villa Creek Cellars (7).  Wife of Cris Cherry wine maker and husband extraordinaire.  In charge of a myriad of things under the umbrella of “Creative Director” of the Villa Creek lifestyle (more on that later).

As I sit down to write this, all I can think about is what I should be doing instead of blogging and so I’ve come up with a 10 item list.

1. Savoring the bright young delicious brand new Villa Creek wines of our 2006 vintage and writing tasting notes and an engaging letter for our upcoming spring release due in one week.

2. Playing Scrabble with the kids.  Last night’s record… 38 points for QUIVER by Henri… I’m so proud.

3. Putting together an itinerary for the winner of the Villa Creek inspired awesome Paso Robles Rhone Rangers package I put together for the Sun Valley Center for the Arts Wine auction.  This package includes tastings at Saxum, Jack Creek, Pasolivo, Terry Hoage and  Four Vines, 4 nights accommodations (at Canyon Villa and Bill Grant’s house), a helicopter tour of the appellation, a blending session at Villa Creek Cellars with a chef Tom catered lunch,  dinner for six at Villa Creek restaurant, a guided Wine Wrangler bus tasting and tour,  lunch with a vertical of Optimus at L’Aventure, a blending session at Four Vines, dinner for six at Bistro Laurent.  Of course everyone donated wine to take home the night of the event (last July).
Sun Valley Center for the Arts hosts a stellar wine event each summer.  Auction lots like ours (from Paso Robles) are still diamonds in the rough in the crowd of Napa cab drinkers that are in attendance and can be stolen for a song!  Never the less, we take great pride in our appellation and will continue to sing the praises of Paso at this fabulous event.  For more info visit  sunvalleycenter.org

4. Cleaning the mud off my running shoes.

5. Creating a floor plan for the future Villa Creek Cellars tasting room (for my 9 am meeting with the draftsman).

6.  Baking the Oaxacan rugs that hang on the wall at Villa Creek restaurant. (annual maintenance)

7. Ordering seeds from Seeds of Change catalogue for our 2008 home and restaurant gardens.  Seed saving is one more thing I can’t seem to fit in.

8.  Washing the dinner dishes - the kids/slaves were excused tonight to do masses of homework.

9. Snuggling up with Bob…that is, reading The Emperor of Wine, the unauthorized auto biography of Robert M. Parker Jr by Elin McCoy.

10.  Sleeping..which is what I’m off to do.

Until next time…

JoAnn

Band of Brothers, Part One

It’s Friday night and your crew is buried face down in prep. You look around and no one is in a panic or even nervous about what is about to take place in a few short hours. Seasons have come and gone, and through each this assembled and ever-maturing team has banged with the best of them, and has proved night in and night out that there is no obstacle to difficult to overcome. On top is where they want to be; and almost in a nonchalant approach, as they pour into the kitchen exchanging hellos and stories of the previous night’s events. Some were shared together and some were luckier than others, enjoying an evening with a lady friend or two. Popped collars under clean toques, fancy pants and rims, this crew seems to belong on the cover of some hip kitchen magazine and almost bad enough to create their own. They move in unison not wasting a step, every movement is precisely thought out. A trip to the dish station also meant on the way back either a pick-up of a needed ingredient or fixing of a Scooby-snack, though not to be consumed immediately but at a future moment in time when knife was not in contact with product.

An hour has passed through mise en place and a stockade of each entrée’s accoutrements is stored below in the lowboys or reach-in refrigerators, stacked accordingly and neat, ready to stand a drill instructor’s white-glove field day inspection. It’s the calm before the invasion and the DMZ is the restaurant’s front door and the invaders are the diners waiting to get their fill. They come in assault after assault in waves of two, four, six or ten, they’re completely unpredictable. Not to worry, your A-Team has dug in deep like a well disciplined military unit fortifying foxholes and stockpiling re-supply points.

H-Hour is near and your soldiers are honing their knives and wiping down their stations preparing for the onslaught. Each have their rituals: a smoke if they’re ready, quarter folded side towels separated for wiping or grabbing hot items, filling up Big Gulp am/pm mugs with soda water and a squeeze of lime, or maybe a last minute phone call to a loved one to let them know they would be home soon. This is where we separate the men from the babies, either shape up or get fried by the chaos that is knocking at your front door.

To Be Continued….

A Boy Named Sous

Johnny Cash sang that life ain’t easy for a boy named Sue. I for one believe that Johnny had it right in more ways then he initially intended. But here I am speaking on a tangent without even a platform to be launching from. Why is it that this song is so near and dear to me? Aside from it being a fantastic song, I am Sue. Sous Chef that is, of a truly tremendous establishment called Villa Creek where I work under an organic and sustainable conceptually dedicated Chef by the name of Tom Fundaro; a hero to the restaurant, community and the industry. But this not a tune to toot Tom’s horn.

Who is the Sous Chef? Most answer that he is the guy who makes sauces. Though wrong you are, for according to Escoffier this is the job of the Saucier. Augustus Escoffier created the Kitchen Brigade, which gave structure to the kitchen. He was a smart man who realized that there were several jobs in the kitchen, each that needed a team leader to instruct each department. Each of these echelons were maintained by the Sous Chef, the second in charge to the Chef. It is oh too funny that he used the word “Brigade,” a military word by definition; self-reliant unit that answers to no one and has its own independent mission and in this case would be to serve exceptional food. And not to mention if you have never visited or sat in on a Friday or Saturday night rush in any kitchen it is a war zone. Sharp objects, hot liquids and gas-powered burners are the weapons and arsenal used by the soldier like line cooks to thwart the seven o’clock, seven thirty and eight o’clock rushes.
So what does the Sous Chef do exactly? In short he is the jack of all trades but master of none; though expected to be master of all. Let’s face it the Chef is the Chef because he has been in the industry for some time. You can also bet that he doesn’t want to work on the line five nights a week from three in the afternoon until late at night. He did that coming up and then some before he was Chef. So it is up to the Sous Chef to ensure that the ideas, visions and quality of the Chef’s food are delivered up to his standards. This large task requires a vast amount of work, dedication and attention to detail. Employing and delegating each of the duties the Chef calls for with the staff that the Chef has put together is a whole ‘nother task on itself. Recognizing each of the individual’s talents without overloading or overlooking any is key everyone wants to be a part of a winning team.
It is here in the delegation process that being Sous is not so easy. The boys you used to hangout with after late nights and engage in debauchery are now your subordinates. Not all friends take orders very well or differentiate between hangout and work time. The hierarchy asks living and working daily with respectable conduct and furthermore to uphold these requirements amongst the staff, though this doesn’t always fair well or very easily. Ah, as well as if a mistake is made during the course of the night, or something is left out over night unwrapped or an item is burnt oh no the line cook does not feel the wrath of the Chef, the Sous Chef does. Answering all of his inquiries on why so and so is not performing or why the system is not working followed by the ultimate question, “Do I need to be there?” Now this question really doesn’t mean does he need to be there so much as it translates to you better do your job or I’ll find someone else who will. After sustaining a lashing, it’s time to suck it up and go about my business.

My daily routine starts with assessing the situation from cleanliness and organization of product to time management for executing the prep-list for the evening’s service. Each day of the week coincides with a particular delivery, whether it is from one of our many organic purveyors for produce, olive oil, local and imported cheeses and other stock dairy items, daily seafood requirements or our game and meat items. Finding a home for all of these newly arrived items is now the labor intensive and anal-retentive portion of my day. This shuffling of product in the dry storage, or either of the walk-in refrigerators allows me to have an up-to-date inventory of stock which in-turn allows me to know what I have to play with for when developing the daily additions to our seasonal menu such as the Soup of the Day, Market Catch or Cut. It is here that most of the thinking and conferencing is done with the Chef as well in the cool air of the walk-in perusing each shelf with its bountiful fruit and vegetable items and the quality check on the delivered fish. The aroma and humming of the fridge’s fan fill the air while we spitball ideas or catch up on the previous night’s business, lack their of how it was managed.
Now after an hour or so of cleaning and organizing, it’s time to do the real fun stuff. Let’s move into the kitchen and ready the ovens, the grill and French Flat Top. Now depending on the time of year this can be awesome or punishing. Obviously in the winter it’s great, but come summer time Paso Robles pumps out some above 100F days and with all of these machines up and running it gets mighty hot. But like the saying goes, if you can’t stand the heat, get your behind out the kitchen.

I’ve hit my knives on my steel and off to prep I am. It’s about ten minutes to one and I have a couple of hours before my line cooks show up and I’ve got plenty to do.