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The iCult, continued… « Scobleizer:
Why do I love living near Silicon Valley? Well, last night Thomas Hawk and Kristopher Tate and I were out to dinner. Had a lovely meal at Pasta Moon. Highly recommended, great food.
I strongly second Scoble's recommendation for Pasta Moon. We've eaten there, and it was great.
From the hockey blog -- wine and cheese talk! (oh yeah, some hockey talk, too...)
Two for Elbowing: Sharks Eliminate the Predators in 5.:
earlier in the week I was up in the city visiting a client I've been working with, and had the opportunity to pop by the Ferry Building. If you haven't been there since the re-did it, you must: it is a wonderful place of small restaurants and high-end foodie shops now, as well as the ferries coming in from Alameda and the North Bay. One of those shops is Cowgirl Creamery. I came home with a nice selection of artisanal cheeses.
To the cheeses, we added a selection of crackers, and we opened up a bottle of 2000 Argyle Willamette Valley sparkling (A pinot an Chardonnay blend), which was perfect with the cheeses and quite tasty on its own. AFter, when the Sharks had won out, I pulled out of my special cache a 2005 Paradise Ranch (Okanagan Valley) Ice Wine made from Pinot Noir grapes, and there was much rejoicing. I'm starting to run a bit short of B.C. Ice Wine, so I'm going to have to finagle a trip north so I can sneak over the border... (fortunately, I now have a reliable supplier that has Oregon and Washington Ice Wines, and that's not bad, either).
A good time was had by all. Among the cheeses sampled tonight -- the Cowgirl triple creme and red hawk, an young italian Peccorino taht had been washed in balsamic with infused juniper berries, a Point Reyes real blue cheese, a pug's leap (Healdsburg) soft and rinded goat's cheese and one other triple creme who's attribution was unreadable, but was from the north bay somewhere.
Of them, my favorites by far were the Cowgirl triple creme, the Point Reyes Blue (very tangy, very sharp, truly awesome) and the Pugs Leap. The Cowgirl Red hawk, which had an interesting red rind caused by bring washed in a brine that changed the bacteria on the surface, was very complex and nutty, but just didn't hold up to the others. The Pecorino was also a lot of fun and interesting.
Damn, I wish Cow Girl had a closer outlet.... Although not inexpensive, it's nice having access to what the local and regional cheese makers are doing now, and there's some amazing stuff.
Oh, yeah. Hockey.
Serious Eats: Talk: What are the best restaurant picks for downtown Vancouver?:
I'm staying in Vancouver Saturday night and have never been to the city. I live in NYC, so I feel like I have access to a lot of good restaurants, but I'd love something that's unique to Vancouver, a local favorite. Simple-but-good or not-fancy-but-delicious are both great traits.
I sent this to Anil privately, and then said to myself "self, we should share this..."
Where to eat depends on where you're staying and what you're looking for.
THE restaurant is Lumiere, by Rob Feeney. He's kinda the Canadian
Emeril, except he can really cook, and there's no BAM. Getting in can
be problematic. his "one step down" place, Feeney's, is supposed to be
great, but we haven't gotten there yet (it's up on Broadway, a taxi
ride from the harbor where we tend to hang out).
My favorite restaurant, bar none, is Province Marinaside
(http://www.provencevancouver.com/marinaside/). you can get there via
water ferry if you want, or it's a short walk out beyond yaletown (or
a taxi ride from downtown).
Another place I like is Carderos, on the water (literally) -- it's on
a pier in the harbor. It's down near the Westin Marina, near Coal
harbor. How popular is it? We tried to get in one night in the middle
of November, in the pouring rain, and had to settle for lound sitting.
Great seafood, though.
Right downtown in the Waterfront (next to the Pan Pacific) is Herons.
I normally don't recommend in-hotel restaurants, this one is an
exception, if you don't mind the Charlie Trotter stacked presentation
style.
Want a good steak? The Keg. Try the baseball sirloin rare.
Make sure you take time to get out to Granville Island and just wander
(and drool). If you're on the harbor instead of false creek, the
seabus will take you to Lonsdale Quay, a nice ride, good views back at
the city, and fun lunch spot.
If you're out and about and looking for something quick and simple,
look for a Bojangles. half coffee/pastry, half breakfast/sandwiches,
it's a wonderful place for something relatively like (to relatively
decadent) -- a few of these around town.
There are a lot of funky places down in Gastown like, oh, Brothers
(for pasta), and chinese and japanese places who's names I forget.
Yaletown has a bunch of places, more upscale/trendy. Yaletown brewing
is a brewpub, but pretty good beer and good food.
The big restaurant areas are in the downtown core (you can basically
pick and drool) near the harbor; lots of places down there. Also up
on Robson in the chi-chi shopping are lots of restaurants. We've
tried (and liked) Kalypso (greek), Earl's (it's -- Earl's), Savory
Coast (upscale italian, great risotto's).
Another big restaurant row is Canbie, which is out towards Stanley
Park (tried the fish house; it's -- okay -- I prefer Following Sea up
near False creek, but not as much as I prefer Provence).
Finally, there's broadway, where Feeney's is. We tend to forage near
the water, so I don't know it very well.
I've heard really good things about cin-cin (italian) maurya (indian),
guu (japanese), Star Anise (west coast).
I swear each trip I'm going to try Lilliget; I never do. It's modern
interpretations of native chow (http://www.liliget.com/).
Neige Apple Ice Wine - Luxist:
As you may know if you read this site often, I am a sucker for a good dessert wine. A few nights ago I sampled an apple ice wine. Neige,an apple ice wine from Quebec, might best be described as the soul of an apple reduced into a perfectly golden and sweet elixir.
I am also a sucker for a good dessert wine. Hell, I'm a sucker for a mediocre one. One of the things I love to grab on the trips to B.C. are some of he ice wines made up there from wineries like Lang Vineyards (try their Merlot ice wine....). Unfortunately for most of us, wines out of British Columbia are between difficult and impossible to find in the states (there is definitely a business opportunity here for someone who wants to set up an importer/distributor for the region...), so you have to go up and get them. If you do visit the region, I recommend you stop in at the Wine Barrel in Victoria, on Broughton).
Much more available (including at BevMo at times) is Inniskillin, out of the Niagara/Ontario region. They do some very good and affordable ice wines, and some really, really good, higher-end ones.
Another area that's doing some really interesting stuff with ice and other dessert wines is the Pacific Northwest. On our last trip, we discovered a really nice wine shop in astoria (The Cellar on 10th) that is a wonderful resource for wines of Oregon and Washington -- and they ship, so if you're in a place where they can legally ship to, you can get access to all the neat stuff only the locals find out about. The Cellar on 10th stocks about 4000 bottles, heavily biased to Oregon and Washington, and a lot of smaller wineries you simply aren't finding elsewhere, and with a good dessert wine selection (have them send you a bottle of the Zerba Cellars Syrah Ice Wine. I'll talk about it more some other time, but trust me, it's awesome). They also take requests and have an online inventory/store if you want to do your own shopping, or you can email them and ask for help.
Our normal behavior when we visit a shop like this is to talk to the proprietor and put ourselves in their hands with a "help us find all of the good stuff we can't get when we get home". that generally gives us a nice sampler to play with. do that a few times, and you really get to know a region and can start recognizing your favorites. it's also an interesting check on the wine shop -- once in a while you'll find one that really pushes you upscale. In Astoria, we started looking for about 6 bottles with roughly a $20-25 price point. We left with a full case, average price $29, including four ice wines. Watch out for shops that try to push you to $40 wines instead of finding wines near your price point, but honestly, we always understate our target price a bit and be flexible based on how we feel about what we're being told. With us, Mike (the owner) did a great job of finding us stuff we wanted, not stuff he felt like selling.
(for the uninitiated: what the heck is an ice wine, anyway? Basically, an ice wine is a wine where the grapes are left on the vines to continue ripening until a freeze happens, and then they're picked and crushed frozen. That allows the winemaker to remove a lot more of the water from the crush, leaving a very concentrated sugar base to ferment. That leads to a very concentrated and syrupy wine that is sweet, but with nice acid to balance it off and interesting nuances. Inniskillin has a good page on ice wines for an overview. Other things you'll see with dessert wines are phrases like late harvest, indicating the grapes harvested towards the end of the harvest, which increases the sugar and reduces the water, or a phrase like botrytis infected, which means the grape skins were infected with a mold that punctures the skin and allows some of the water to escape, leaving a concentrated sugar. Otherwise the mold is harmless, so don't worry -- just enjoy. Some wineries artificially create ice wines by freezing grapes after harvest, but while they tend to be more affordable, I consider them mostly a way to encourage beginners to try ice wines out.
Ice Wines and dessert wines in general, tend to be more expensive, and they normally come in half-bottles (375ml), so keep that in mind when you buy and compare prices to other wines. If you think about it, the process to create ice wines, involving harvesting the grapes at 2AM during a hard frost, then squeezing out most of the water, means the amount of wine per acre you can make is much lower than other wines, while the labor costs and other processing are higher. But is it a wonderful way to end a nice meal, especially with a nice cheese plate. These wines generally work anywhere a port would work....)
Peppermint Fudge Cake is great for the holidays -- megnut.com:
Looking for a delicious holiday cake? This Peppermint Fudge Cake will have everyone raving. I made it a few years ago for the family for Christmas and it was a huge hit.
oh, this one goes in the recipe files.
Wine extract keeps fat mice healthy - Yahoo! News:
For years, red wine has been linked to numerous health benefits. But the new study, published online in the journal Nature on Thursday, shows that mammals given ultrahigh doses of resveratrol can get the good effects of cutting calories without actually doing it.
"If we're right about this, it would mean you could have the benefit of restricting calories without having to feel hungry," Sinclair said. "It's the Holy Grail of aging research."
Resveratrol, produced when plants are under stress, is found in the skin of grapes and in other plants, including peanuts and some berries.
The 55 resveratrol-treated obese mice were on a high-calorie diet — what one scientist called a "McDonald's diet." Not only were they about as healthy as normal mice, they were also as agile and active on exercise equipment as their lean cousins, demonstrating a normal quality of life that was unexpected for such obese creatures, said study co-author Rafael de Cabo of the Institute on Aging.
Fried Coca-Cola Debuts in Texas:
A new fast food is making its debut at U.S. fairs this fall—fried Coke.
Abel Gonzales, 36, a computer analyst from Dallas, tried about 15 different varieties before coming up with his perfect recipe—a batter mix made with Coca-Cola syrup, a drizzle of strawberry syrup, and some strawberries.
Oh... My.... God......
The Frontal Cortex : Wine Ratings Are For Suckers:
Everytime I walk into a wine store, and see that collage of numerical stickers (This Chianti is a 91! This Pinot Grigio is an 88!), the neuroscientist in me wants to tear them all down an go on a long rant about unconscious biases. The idea that the human olfactory system can reliably decipher the difference between a wine worth 90 points and a wine worth 89 points is patently ridiculous.
Actually, there are groups of people with well-trained and/or very sensitive noses that can. But for the other 99.55 of the population, this is right, but maybe irrelevant.
I guess it boils down to how seriously you see the difference between a wine rated 88 and one rated 89 or 91. Is the difference really statistically significant? Depends on how serious you are about wine and how well trained your palate is.
Me, I take the ratings as a continuum, to be adjusted based on what I know about the winery, what I know about the wine itself, and how much it costs. Given two wines I know absolutely nothing about, if there's one rated at 92 at $15 and another rated at 88 for $10, I'll buy the 88. On the other hand, a 92 at $25 and a 70 at 10 -- I'll probably buy the 92.
This is also how I deal with a wine list full of wines I'm not familiar with -- and I've had more than one waiter come back with a bottle and tell me the wine master wanted to know how I knew to order that bottle. In many ways, it's simple. First, I choose the varietal I want, and I look at the pricing of the restaurant. Throw out the most expensive (aka "ego", "schedule C" or "I am showing off") wines like Opus One (which is a damn good wine, but I can easily find and enjoy two or three bottles nearly as good for the same price, and by the end of the evening be even happier than if I'd ordered the Opus) -- and by looking at what the general price range is for the restaurant, I look to see what wines are priced at about 2/3 of the high price.
That seems to consistently put me in the sweet spot of the restaurant's wine list, without overpaying for the most expensive. It is, for instance how I discovered David Bruce Pinots, which are well worth discovering...
I guess it's all about taking the tools you're given and adapting them to your satisfaction, and not treating them too literally or too seriously...
Another interesting study, which frankly, should create a "no duh" from you, but -- probably won't.
If you eat salads with no fats, you won't benefit from the nutrition in the salad as much. Some of the good things you need in the salad (especially beta and the other carotenes) are fat soluble. No fat, they don't get pulled into your system, and instead get, um, expelled.
Now, that doesn't mean you need to douse things with extra-creamy ranch.
Have you noticed how "traditional" dietary habits keep being shown to have practical nutritional reasons? You think that's a coincidence? Even before modern science, cultures figured out that if you ate things certain ways, they were better for you than if you didn't.
And salads with a bit of balsamic and some olive oil, or a nice vinegrette?
priceless. and good for you.
maybe we should mention it again: extremes bad. moderation good. too much fat bad. no fat bad. some fat? good.
All of this stuff serves purposes in your body (except for high fructose corn syrup and artificially produced trans fats, which are there for the convenience of the food industry, not you). The trick is to learn how to eat well -- and in moderation.
here's a pointer to a new dental device aimed at making you eat slower.
Scientists have found that if you eat slower, you end up eating less, because the signal for being full hits and turns off the appetite.
you could also, of course, put down your fork between every bite. Try it. really.
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