 Tuscan Son
The Folonaris, padre e figlio, grown rich from sales of their large-scale wine production, bought some 40 hectares among the immortal cypresses of Bolgheri, 70km south of Livorno, and called it Campo al Mare. They planted 30 hectares of Vermentino, the white grape of Sardinia, which lies just across the breezy Tyrrhenian Sea, and bottled an elegant, small-scale Italian vin du pays now featured at Sage Eastbluff and Sage on the Coast. Straw-colored and un-oaked, the 2006 Campo al Mare is blended with 5% sauvignon blanc, and has a bouquet, according to Ambrogio and Giovanni, of “tropical fruit, sage, and tomato leaf.” With notes of citrus and honey, and a little mineral on the finish, it goes well with Sage’s herb chicken, or the crusted halibut with lemon caper butter, and sips nicely with appetizers and salads on warm fall days.
|
|
Speak Again
On December 3, Sage Eastbluff will mark its 10th anniversary. Chef Rich is celebrating, like Lear, collecting the encomiums of his devotees. Click on the link provided and share with him your story of a memorable Sage experience—an unexpected delight, winning sauce, rapturous wine or sudden conversion to a new favorite food. The winners will get gift certificates for dinner at their favorite table.
memories@sagerestaurant.com
|
|
Autumn Tasting Menu
Beginning in October, Chef Rich will do a four-course farmers’ market tasting menu on Wednesdays at Sage Eastbluff, following up the success of the Farmers’ Market Expedition Dinner in August. That night, if you missed it, an adoring coterie inspired him to flights of improvisation—beginning with one idea, surging ahead, finding a better one, changing course, extemporizing like Ornette Coleman—sending out course after course (one lost count) to his grateful and incredulous guests. Chef hopes the new tasting menu will introduce regular diners to the unusual bounty and variety of the season, allowing them to treat their palates to the untried without committing to a larger and more expensive dish. Newcomers will get a sense of the breadth of his technique and the range of his imagination. Because the tasting menu is a series of small plates, it frees Chef Rich to buy the best a farmer has brought to market—peak produce that’s particularly rare or ripe but that the farmer often has in amounts too small to use in a featured entrée. He then gets to think on his feet, try out new ideas, and get feedback from the cognoscenti. The cost is only $35, excluding tax and gratuity.
About the artist: Jill Dodd painted these cypresses while vacationing in Italy. She and her husband Jeff have been regulars at Sage for years, and enjoy having dinner on the patio and chatting with Chef Rich about his latest creations.
|
|
To Autumn!
The sedge is withered from the lake, and all one has of harvest plenty is a listing, combustible sheaf of corn and a basket of lurid, nodular gourds. How does one partake of the traditional delights of this routinely overindulged season without actually boiling a ham bone or rolling a crust? Well, Kristin Markley Woodward has again worked her strange alchemy, turning bushels of seasonal market produce—pears, apples, passion fruit—into three unique, rich and heady cocktails, intensely flavored and unforgettable. Imagine lingering with your date by the fire at Sage on the Coast. An errant, chill, portentous gust stirs your beloved’s auburn curls. You stay to share a Pear Cobbler—poached pears, muddled with orange zest, shaken with Modern Spirits Pear Lavender Vodka, stirred with Chantilly cream and Poire William, and served in a glass striped with caramel and rimmed with a brown sugar and spice “crumble” which collects delightfully on your beloved’s lips. The Waldorf Cocktail pays unscrupulous homage to an American classic with fresh apple puree, Modern Spirits Celery Peppercorn Vodka and a fragrant drop of walnut oil. And fresh passion fruit—still tumbling off their vines—muddled with lime and ginger, create a sultry Brazilian Caipiroshka (a vodka version of the traditional cachaça-and-lime caipirinha or “drink of farmers”). Sip appreciatively on the Eastbluff patio while the days are still warm, the colors intense, and the air still choked with butterflies.
|
|
 Autumn Salads
Chef Rich says this is no time to give up salads. They’re light but sustaining. They excite the palate before a meal, and cleanse it before dessert. And they always have the potential to become classics—think of the unlikely ingredients that went into the Caesar or the Waldorf. While summer salads are a relief—easy and refreshing—autumn salads can be more unusual and memorable. If you start with what’s available in the market, you’ll have plenty of fruits and vegetables still to choose from; then add a protein. Summer salads might combine chicken or seafood with a salsa, relish, or light herbs, but in autumn you can use something richer and heavier, and pile on the cheese and nuts. A good example is the Warm Duck Breast Salad with gorgonzola, pears, candied pecans and warm port sauce.
Making a great autumn salad is all about contrasts: in temperature (hot with cold), in flavor (sweet with spicy, salty with sour), and especially texture (things that pop, crunch or melt). The crunch might come from toasted pine nuts or walnuts, croutons, Sage’s famous parmesan crisp, raw vegetables like jicama or carrots, or lightly blanched ones like French green beans. The pop might be cherry tomatoes, corn, olives or garbanzos. Textures that melt might be cheeses, cooked fresh lima beans, or soft, roasted root vegetables like fennel, beets, turnips or parsnips. Juxtapose the flavor profiles of autumn produce: Anaheim chilies, lipstick peppers, or wild arugula for spice; pomegranates or dried fruit for sweetness; persimmons for tartness. Taste a wide array of vinegars and oils (and emulsifiers—like honey or mustard) and make a dressing to fit just the salad in front of you. Take risks, have fun and be inventive—they may name that salad after you!
|
|
Foodshed
The duty of the locavore
is first to pay a little more
to eat within a radius
(a hundred miles more or less)
only food produced therein
forsaking any little whim
for Belgian chocolate, Caspian roe,
or wines from vintners in Bordeaux.
He won’t across the continent carry
anything edible, unless by dromedary.
Just living by these simple rules
he curbs the use of fossil fuels,
and slows the tankers, trucks and jets
contributing to the greenhouse mess.
By drinking only catnip tea,
he supports sustainability,
and severs man’s grasp from his reach
by daring not to eat a peach.
Our patio will not allow
the keeping of a single cow,
but sourcing all one’s daily rations
has no doubt its satisfactions:
unhurried ripeness, vitamin K,
melons with so much more to say,
parsnips with a provenance,
greens one need wash only once,
potted tomatoes of thrilling largess,
plums and Poblanos, Crenshaws and cress,
pears more varied than Inuit snow,
produce unpatented by Monsanto,
penne from Pasadena wheat,
and farming that won’t the soil deplete.
What seems best, the charming hilltop village,
was prone to hunger, pests and pillage.
But a juicier steak had Julia Child
When she at Monsieur Butcher smiled.
Can one meet the fishwife eye to eye
and wipe the contrails from the sky?
|
|
 |
 |
|
|
