Thanksgiving 2009

We just finished the stuffing for our family meal at lunch today, we started serving our once a year turkey soup and I just finished making my yearly batch of jook ( a chinese rice porridge made from turkey bones and any various nos. of ingredients) in homidge to the lunches on cold winter days as I was growing up back East.

Thanksgiving at Sage means many things and we are espescially fond of the food memories we have built up over the years. This years gravy was espescially good, rivaling the '08 which some experts thought was the best. The mushroom stuffing was solid ( and with the gravy made a great late night stuffing sandwich) and the appetizers which were meant to be shared were bought and were shared by many.

We worked for a little over a week roasting bones for a stock for the gravy, brining turkeys ( we roasted around 125 lbs. of turkey, plus two 12lb. prime ribs), making various stuffings, cranberry sauces, appetizers and desserts. With the restaurant closed the Tuesday before Thanksgiving I was able to fill the burners of both stoves with stocks, soup ( our roast Weiser Farms butternut squash ) gravies, sauces, vegetables and on and on. Mark made some great sage ham and cheddar cheese biscuits and ofcourse the wonderful homie thanksgiving desserts -- a meyer lemon meringue pie that brought back memories of childhood Thanksgiving dinners.

Hopefully we will have another Sage Thanksgiving and the next one can be enjoyed just as much as this one.

And while our state might be a mess financially, you can't beat the weather.

Green Feast 2009, South Coast Farms, San Juan Capistrano

September 12, 2009

Menu

Grilled Pizzas
burrata cheese, cob oven roasted south coast farms veggies,
heirloom cherry tomato jam

Cob Oven Roasted Carlsbad Aquafarm Mussels
panko, herb butter

South Coast Farms Melon and MM Livestock Ham
fresh mint, extra virgin olive oil

Santa Barbara Spot Prawns and Local White Sea Bass
herb polenta, tomato verbena broth, extra virgin olive oil

Herb Grilled MM Livestock Chicken
south coast farms cob oven roast zucchini, squash,
bell peppers and weiser farms pee wee potatoes, poulet jus

Grilled J & J Grassfed Beef Sirloin
grilled corn, caramelized sweet bermuda onions, mcgrath farms
fresh Mexican red beans, padron peppers, beef jus, grilled tomatillo
sauce, mixed greens, fresh corn tortillas florales

White Cheddar Goat Cheese
and Winchester Farms Jalapeño Gouda Cheese
wild arugula, toasted walnuts, fig port reduction

Grilled Tenerelli Orchards Peach Cobbler
burnt honey sauce, vanilla crème fraiche

WINE AND BEER
Each course is paired with the appropriate wine
provided by the following organic vintners and brewers:
Alma Rosa Winery & Vineyards
Bonterra Winery
Stone Brewing Company
Ventura Limoncello
Menu subject to change due to availability

32701 Alipaz Street San Juan Capistrano, CA 92675

Debbie Wong has Outrageous Mangos

Brian Wolf of Luques and AOC called them the single best thing at the farmer's market, but when I first had them a while back they were expensive and the one I got wasn't ripe yet. Then I decided to try another one a few weeks ago and it was an epiphany, a mango epiphany. It was sweet, smooth almost creamy, it was an almost perfeect mango.I couldn't wait to use them, in dessert a panna cotta using hardly any sugar, a lobster salad with avocado and green papaya and by itself. I gave one to my friend Abe and he couldn't believe the flavor and texture.
Of course what would you expect from Wong Farms. They grow in the desert out toward the Salton Sea and we get their tomatoes in late winter and early spring.The tomatoes warrant tomato salads when no one eventhinks of these things. So cudos to Debbie and Wong Farms for their outrageous Mangos.

Chicago Dogs and Hot Dogs in General

Recently I went on a trip to Chicago ( really Wilamette) and as with most of my trips I thought about food and decided to focus on searching for the quintecinal Chicago Dog. My understanding is it is the hot dog, a poppy seed bun, a pinch of celery salt, some tomato slices, mustard, a pickle wedge, onions and perhaps that crazy green relish ( no ketchup). As always when I visit my brother and his family we started at Irving's for Red Hot Lovers. I originally thought that the place was was a trashy lingerie type place and could never understand what it was doing in such a nice area ( of course I grew up in Washington D.C. across Wisconsin Avenue from the Good Guys).
Inside there is a long counter and lots of guys taking orders and making hot dogs. At Mustard's End in Evanston there was the same thing and as any good restaurant guy could figure out you have to serve alot of hot dogs quickly to make money, and since the food cost is low you can have more labor to make up for it. The hot dogs were a little different at each place but slowly I realized that for me the grilled dog was much more interesting than the steamed or boiled. The bun was important but I usually added ketchup, a huge no no.
On atrip to Washington D.C. and Ben's Chile Bowl it was the griddled half smoke with chile cheese and onions and while the setup was similar -- lots of people making lots of dogs, chil, burgers and fries fast, the dogs were very different but both were really good, complete meals on a bun and only 800 calories and you don't even feel full.
And I learned one important thing, I'm glad I don't live near any of these places because the hot dogs are really good and too easy to eat. Chile fries need ketchup and when you finally have the money to eat what you want your conscience and your weight won't allow you to do it.
But I still am searching for the Chicago Dog ( we took a trip to the Dawg Haus but the people in the picture had already waited an hour and my nephew didn't have the patience nor the hunger for adventure to wait that long) to end all Chicago Dogs and I'm hoping someone can name some places for me to try on my next trip back.s

McGrathFarms Customer Appreciation Day, Our Farm Tour Continues

Phil McGrath, farmer, friend and visionary invited us to participate in his first ever customer appreciation day at his family's farm in Oxnard. We've known Phil for years and have bought his produce espescially his beets forever.His farm's produce is legendary and Phil has always supported the dinners we have held on various farms as well as at the restaurants and many times joining us for meals. Maybe this was payback.

Anyway when he invited us to make some food for his first annual customer appreciation day it was an offer we couldn't refuse. After all it was only about an hour and 45 minutes to the Central exit on the 101 in Oxnard and it was only 50 - 75 people, okay maybe 200 - 300 people. It sounded like fun in a Huck Finn kind of way.

I drafted Adam as a volunteer and we kicked around some food ideas. August is a great time to visit a farm and we wanted to highlight the vegies and have some fun at the same time. Drawing on our earlier summer farm trips we hit on grilled pizzas, grilled sweet corn, warm roast beets and wilted dandelion greens and srawberry shortcake with a sweet vanilla cream.

Phil got the wood grill and the mesquite, supplied the vegies and we drove to Oxnard to cook the food. Pizza is such a great way to highlight great veggies and grilling them is such a wonderful rustic way to cook them. Fresh tomatoes, grilled zucchini, bell peppers and red onions, dandelion greens, fresh herbs, a tomato jam made from Phil's heirloom cherry tomatoes and add some mozzarella and burrata cheeses, these pizzas were great. The sweet corn, just picked and thrown on the grill. We made a chipotle lime butter ( the chipotles came from Windrose farms) and slatherred it on the corn which didn't really need to be cooked since it was soo fresh and sweet. The beets were roasted and peeled and we heated them over the fire and wilted the dandelion greens in another pan and tossed them together with a simple dijon red wine vinaigrette, a touch of walnut oil and sprinkled with a horseradish creme fraiche.

And finally Mark's strawberry shortcake with McGrath Farms macerated strawberries, the shortcake, a huge hit and a spoonful or sweet vanilla cream. A menu that seemed simple and rustic, very representative of our food yet alot of work for two people to put together. But it was fun with the Herzog Kosher Zinfandel from just down the street ( besides the wine they brought a bruschetta with the heirloom cherry tomatoes, cannelini beans and lamb bacon(?!)), and most importantly the people. A. Weiser was there ( anywhere for a party) as well as members of the McGrath family and their customers many of whom participate in his very successful CSA program. The Market they built on the farm has really developed. And at the end when everyone left it was the feeling you get from being around people who appreciate the farm and the food. You hug people goodbye that you just met and as one person put it once you've eaten food like this it's hard to go back to the grocery store

Summer on the Farms

It's been a while since I've blogged and it's not that I haven't had things to write about, or a desire to do it, rather time has been precious. Business wise it's been a tough year and as the owner I'm the only one that can work for free and so my labor has been in high demand. But there still has been time to cook in the outdoors and visit some of our favorite farmers and farms.

This years farm tour began in Tehachapi at Weiser Family Farms where we cooked a dinner for 18 people in the foothills of the Sierras. Alex Weiser and his family supply us with lots of great produce from potatoes to the wonderful melons we are featuring now on our menus be it Sunday Brunch at Eastbluff to the Scallops at the Coast. The dinner was a wonderful get together and featured beets, sweet bermuda onions, zucchinis and squashes, tomatoes, carrots, lettuces, strawberries and grassfed ribeyes and sausages from the J&J Beef ranchers as well as interesting wines and beer.

There were two small grills and a few picnic tables and wine and beer and the setting was memorable. Cooking dinners in situations like this allow us to be less than perfect because the environment of the dinner alone makes for an unforgettable evening. Fortunately we were able to pull off a wonderful dinner in the rustic style I have practiced for years. One dish that really stood out was a grilled little gem lettuce salad with roast garlic vinaigrette made from the Weiser's green garlic. This was garnished with shaved parmesan cheese and crostinis made from a roast garlic and asiago cheese bread. The dinner finished with a strawberry shortbread dessert and the revelation that I didn't have to camp out, but was able to get a room at the nearby Best Western.

A few weeks later we rolled onto our yearly trip to Coleman Farms and our Outstanding in the Field dinner. This was our third dinner with Jim Denevan and his roving farm dinner series. It was a Sunday night, the summer solstice, father's day and Romeo Coleman's birhtday. Joe Davis was bringing his wines and this year we had great draft beer from a local brewery Telgraph ( the left over hops and such go into the compost pile at Coleman farms) and my friends from the Spanish River Kitchen in Florida, Henry and Michelle joined us in cooking the meal. We developed the menus for these dinners trying to source out everything within a hundred mile radius of the farm or in some cases our restaurant. While the dinner is alot of work for us, 150 people eating at one long table family style on the farm, it is also rewarding in that it gives the people that travel with us to the farm a chance to better understand what I am trying to do at the restaurant.

This year's dinner began with grilled pizzas. We had been experimenting with these and they turned out great, vegetables from the farm, burrata cheese, an heirloom tomato jam we created for the dinner a few years ago and some of the sausages made from the grassfed beef from the J&J ranch.

Next, after everyone sat down, was a "shooter of sea urchin" with sweet onions, persian cucumbers,cilantro and a yuzu vinaigrette with a little kick. The Sea Urchins were caught off the Ventura coast and the vegies were from our friends the farmers at the Santa Monica Farmers Market.

The real deal meal started with a dish which came about because we had 50lbs. of Santa Barbara Spot Prawns and needed to make a dish that would allow us to serve them in the shell (we didn't want to clean them all ourselves). Steve Moore supplied the prawns and they were alive and squirming when we started cooking on Sunday. The dish consisted of a tomato water steeped with verbena and then simmerred with shrimp heads, local white sea bass poached in the liquid, an herb polenta, chopped Italin Parseley and a nice exta virgin olive oil all garnished by fried prawn heads in a tribute to Bill Coleman's Phillipino heritage. Lots of bread to sop up the liquid.

Next came pig. We had a great wood burning barbecue to finish the pigs in a chipotle glaze with a pinot jus and our grilled corn and zucchini salad with slow cooked greens. This turned out better than we practiced and made me wish I had a reason to buy a grill like the one we were using.

Finally more grassfed beef. This was going with a porter beer and a syrah. We marinated the beef in beer, garlic, mustard and herbs. The cut of beef was a sirloin and we wanted to grill it and cut it relatively thin to make sure it wouldn't be hard to eat. We served it with our grilled little gem lettuce salad, this time with a hard sheeps milk cheese from Rinconada farms, which we perfected after our dinner at Weiser farms, and roasted sweet Bermuda onions-- wonderfully carmelized.

Dessert was macerated Pudwill farms berries, and a skillet blueberry corn cake with a sweet vanilla cream. The dessert was served as the sun set and then dinner was finished. As always it was a great time, the setting was spectacular and hopefully everyone had a great dinner.

The trip itself was highlighted by the lunch we share with Colemans where Dehlia makes her "soul" food which always brings me back to meals my mom made when we were kids always with big servings of rice. The cold beer and wine we shared while we're cooking the dinner. The feeling of finishing a dinner which you can plan over and over in your head but need to finish it in order for people to see and feel the picture. And finally there was the trip to La Super Rico Taco in Santa Barbara before we drove back.

The farm tour continues this summer with a trip to McGrath Farms in Oxnard to cook with their great produce for their customer appreciation day and then finally another farm dinner on September 12th, this one closer, in San Juan Capistrano at South Coast Farms to help raise funds for the Ecology Center. Look for our Santa Barbara fisherman's soup and grilled pizzas as well as some new dishes we are creating to utilize the summer vegetables from the farm.

We hope to see you soon so you can share some of the dishes we've perfected this summer as well as others we're still working on.

Marketing

It's been a while. And that doesn't mean that I don't have lots to say.it's just that I don't have lots of time. The economy has been tough for everyone and the different ways we all are trying to market our restaurants, be it on a small level or a grand one, takes time and creativity. For some it even takes money. I have alot of creativity which I don't charge for and not alot of money.
We have been tossing out lots of ideas and events and I have also begun to do cooking classes/demos. These are things I don't have to pay for ( although most of the time we do pay for the food ). It's up to me to create the buzz and I had a summer of practice last year when I traveled around the U.S. cooking for KIA Motors. We started at Bloomingdale's Home Store a few months ago and went on to Sur le Table a few weeks ago. All the recipes we use have been tested and are or have been used in the restaurant. Hopefully people walk away from these demos and have learned something. And hopefully a few of these people come in to eat.
This next week we have the Wild and Crazy Taco Night for the SOS ( Share our Selves) and then Friday an event for SOS ( Share our Strength). Then in May we are cooking with Cathy Thomas and Alan Greeley for fun and to raise money for Culinary Action Direct. In June we go to Carpinteria for our annual Outstanding in the Field at Coleman Farms.
Where does this all get me. Well it raises money for people that need it, and it hopefully gets our name out there so people remember us, and it also enables me to enjoy the chance to work with my friends in the industry without the everyday pressures we feel these days.
The classes take me back to our inception, and the charity events take up valuable time but they all allow me the opportunity to connect with people who have common interests. Hopefully everyone has the chance to participate and hopefully those who can help others.
Thursday night is Korean Beef Tacos with Kimchi, Sesame seeds, Persian Cucumbers, Korean Style Chile Paste and Crispy Corn Tortillas.
Hope to see you There.

El Pollo Rico

I am a chef and I am a foodie. It's a great career to have if you love food. At our restaurants on Monday nights as we are closing we have been known to watch Anthony Bouridan and No Reservations on the Travel Channel. Recently he visited Washington D.C., the city I grew up in and the city I travel to frequently to visit my father. As in all the episodes we watch there is alot of food you wish you could eat, and in this show there were quite a few places I wished I could visit.
On my last trip a few weeks ago I had an opportunity to visit El Pollo Rico in Virginia a place I couldn't pass up. Bourbon Steak, or El Pollo Rico, the Four Seasons or a wherehouse type building on a side street in Arlington. Need I say more.
The chicken was moist, the skin was flavorful and if I had gotten there during the peek time I know I would have been rocked. But even on a Wednessday night after 8:30 it was still good enough to go again when I get the chance. Chicken, cole slaw, french fries, a spicy green sauce and a lemon dijon type aioli (mayonaise), some desserts and some sodas, that's it. But it was worth it-- It was a Zankou type experience, and I will do it again.

Gumbo

It's that time of year, Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday, a perfect excuse for making gumbo. We started our gumbo last week on our tasting menu at Eastbluff and have continued it this week at both restaurants. I love it and will eat it all day if I could erase my conscience. It tastes great and it represents the soul of the cook. It also has a little bit of butter, oil and flour.

A few years ago, before hurricane Katrina, even before Sage. I used to make a yearly pilgramage to New Orleans and the South for the Jazz Fest. It was a memorable week and for me as well as many other people the food was as important as the music. I had a chance encounter with Earl Palmer at a club, as well as a chance to meet Aaron Neville when I was hitch hiking home at an quite an early hour from a bar outside of the city.

I ate gumbo every chance I had as well as poorboys and muffaletas. There was barbecue and red beans and rice, crawfish and fried soft shell crabs and boy do I miss my trips to the South. It was the food and also the people.

But what I wanted to learn was the gumbo and what I realized was it was all about the roux. Some type of oil and flour cooked together until the flour mixture begins to cook and start turning brown. You have to keep stirring and you don't want to burn the roux but when you do it right the flavor of a chocolate colored roux imparts a nutty favor which is integral to a gumbo ( we also use this roux to finish our turkey gravy for Thanksgiving). It took me a long time to master my roux and now I have been able to teach it to some of the other cooks in the kitchen, but my quest for the perfect roux is something I will always remember and equate it with my trips to the South. ( Ask anyone who has tried about roux burns and they will tell you about the complexities of achieving the perfect roux.) Not the most healthy thing to use when cooking but the depth of flavor it adds as well as the texture is magical when done right.

Strawberries

February and Valentines Day tends to make people think of strawberries. Something about the holiday be it love, hearts or the color brings strawberries to the forefront. This week at the farmer's market we went on a hunt for strawberries.

Last week were the first strawberries I really started tasting this year and they were good for this time of year. There was some acid, a little sweetness and some real strawberry flavor. But this weekend it rained and I knew the berries were going to lose alot of their flavor yet I still needed them for our strawberry bruschetta at Sage on the Coast for our wine tasting Satgurday afternoon.

As we walked the market I saw strawberries both on the tables and in customers bags and baskets. Many of the berries we saw looked great but when I tasted them and talked to the farmers I realized that just as I expected the rain had robbed them of much of their flavor. Even the venerable Harry"s Berries were washed out. That is of course until I tasted the gnarly little ones that Gloria had grown.There in lay the problem. There were lots of big beautiful strawberries available without the flavor that makes a great strawberry or I could buy a strawberry that didn't look so great but had flavor, not the greatest flavor, but much better than the others.

I bought the ones with flavor. Thats me. It happens with tangerines, with tomatoes, with so many other fruits and vegetables. It is something I try to teach my chefs, and it is something I preach to anyone who will listen, the best looking produce doesn't always taste the best and that is why we go to the market. Of course there are lessons to learn in life reflected in our produce.

Riva

I went to LAX last night to pick up my brother and of course we were going to get something to eat. It was the start of Chinese New Year so of course a seat at the counter of Chinois, a place we had been to a few years ago and a place I used to go to sit at the counter and steal ideas, watch techniques (Kazuto splitting the live lobster and then putting it in the wok), and of course eat great food. However, Gung Hay Fa Choy, the menu was a special tasting menu for $95.00 and while a few years ago we would have dived right in we have gotten a little too old to eat that much too late. So we got the car back from the valet and went to Joe's Restaurant in Venice. He is a dear friend for years and I see him at the Farmer's Market most every week and I had been wanting to go there for quite a while. We'll sit at the counter and eat some appetizers, maybe split an entree I told my brother, but alas by 8:15 on Sunday they could no longer take walk ins because they were running out of food and they wanted to make sure they had enough for their reservations. So what's next.
Riva, just reviewed in the L.A. Times and in a space I new well. Formerly owned by my former friend Bruce Beach. It used to be a dark and almost dirty space but Jason( an aquaintance from the farmer's market and owner and chef at Fraiche in Culver City) has turned it into an inviting place completely different from before ( I never did see it in its past incarnation as Scarbonis(?)) with space and windows.And most of all pizza.Great crust, not too expensive and a nice place to sit and eat and talk. Now a days its all about the crust and with the wood burning oven this crust is great( of course my crust turned out great on New Years day with the oven at my friend's house but I use cheese like I'm from New York not Italy).
So if you have a chance enjoy the pizza and remember that the Sage and Sage on the Coast Chinese New Years tasting menus are only $35.00 and they include a fortune cookie after dessert.

The evolution of a dish

The new year has started, we have a new president and as a restaurant guy I'm trying to come up with ideas to get new customers and keep my existing ones with new dishes or new ideas. Sometimes you create dishes because of something you read, or maybe something you saw on television or you tasted something. Many times it is an idea which might have hit me while walking through the farmer's market or talking with other chefs. Seasonal be it produce or proteins, sometimes traditional food combinations sometimes combinations based on the land where the food was raised and the grapes were grown. These ideas start and sometimes sit with you for a long time before the right time comes along and you can use it. The sweet corn tamales morphed into a side dish of grits with corn and asiago cheese served with pork and a pinot sauce.
You hang out with friends and experience different cultures and foods and you store that and along the way something comes up and a dish materializes. New Years Day I was lucky enough to tag along with my friends Abe and his wife Sarah and got to experience the foods of a traditional Japanese New Year's Day with their friends in the hills above Beverly Hills. The wood burning oven on the patio allowed me to experiment with our pizza dough as well as beets and duck confit. Hopefully the ideas which I have been kicking around will grow into a dish.
A recent trip to Washington D.C. and a visit to an Indian Restaurant called Risakka introduced me to a great bar snack-- popcorn. Of course this one was seasoned with cumin, chile powder, coriander and fried curry leaves, a little spicy, great and unusual.
Which brings us to Fried Chicken. We were searching for a dish to serve Sunday nights at Sage on the Coast ( Eastbluff has Stroganoff). Something along the lines of the barbecue rib dinners we served during the summer. Comfort food for hard times.
In August I cooked a dinner for my friend Joe Davis's birthday in the central coast wine country with Henry and Michele Salgado from the Spanish River Grill in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. Henry had worked with Edna Lewis in Atlanta and had learned to make her legendary fried chicken. We decided to make this chicken as one of the dishes for the party. I followed Henry discreetly notebook in hand and tried to write down as much as I could. The dish was a two day operation or maybe it just seemed that way. He brined the chicken overnight, rinsed it and soaked it in buttermilk. Meanwhile he seasoned some lard in a "rondo" with a ham hock, or maybe two. After the ham hock cooked through on low heat,he seasoned the chicken with the secret flour mixture-or was that potato flour?- and then began the frying process. Helped by our new found drinking buddy, Bradley Ogden, we were able to cook 50lbs.of chicken quarters successfully for some of the best fried chicken I've ever had. Better yet we shredded the ham hock and added it to our slow cooked greens.
So with this experience under my belt I set about with Chefs Kris and Adam to come up with our own fried chicken tradition. After a few false starts ( the beauty of this dish is even the mistakes still taste pretty good) we have begun the process and I think are on our way to a dish that, while not legendary will still be pretty darn good.So far we have studied brining and learned about the inticacies of buttermilk and when we have finished we will have created our own version of something similar to what I ate with Henry, though the ambiance of that occasion might never be recreated.
Some of the things we have been thinking about besides the process and the flavors is how we are going to cook the chicken, with bones( traditional) or without bones (due to our time constraints in the kitchen). How is the portion going to look, how big is our serving size? Who is resonsible for assembing the dish? What are the sides going to be? How will it look? What do we do with the leftovers besides employee meals. We after all are in a business and need to utilize as much of the dish as possible to sell to our customers. Our major concern is that it tastes great but all of these other thoughts go in to creating a dish. Timing in the kitchen and how many steps a dish takes is important when you are trying to create your menu. You need to balance the different stations in the kitchen so one section doesn't get "slammed" and force everyone else to lose their timing. Kitchens get out of synch and customers end up waiting for their food way longer than is desireable.
We are now working on our product figuring we will unveil the dish the Sunday after the Super Bowl. I will continue to update during the next few weeks and hopefully you will be able to come and taste the finished product.