Halloween Appetizers - Bones and Eyeballs

Here's a great appetizer to pair with a bold red wine. You could make your own bread dough and marinara, but this is so simple to put together with premade ingredients. The bread "bones" are delicious dipped in the marinara; the Mozarella "eyeballs" melt slightly in the warm marinara.

Tama's Halloween Bones and Eyeballs Appetizer

Ingredients:
1 package frozen bread dough
1 jar ready made marinara sauce
8 ounces of baby Mozarella
1/16 cup pitted black olives

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper; do not oil. Let the bread dough thaw until softened (or make your own recipe white bread dough). With a sharp knife, portion the dough into 1 ounce pieces (a heaping 1/8 cup). Using lightly floured hands, roll each piece into a "bone" with large ends and skinny middles. Press the ends with your thumb to make the "joint" ends of the bone. Line the "bones" up on the parchment and let sit for 15 minutes, until they have risen just slightly, but before they dough has risen enough to change the shape. Bake in the preheated oven until baked but not browned. Remove and set aside.

Heat the marinara sauce in a small pot. Marinara without chunks of herbs or vegetables will look more like "blood". Cut the olives into small "irises" for the eyeballs, using a sharp paring knife. Cut a small hole in each baby Mozarella ball to fit the olive piece inside. Pour the warmed marinara into a serving dish and dot with the "eyeballs". Serve the "bones" on the side to dip in the sauce.

Spook your friends with this "bloodbath" of marinara sauce, bread "bones" to gnaw on, and Mozarella and olive "eyeballs". Especially bewitching with a bold red wine, like a sangiovese or a blend, like the Tamas "Andiamo" sangiovese and zinfandel blend.

Anyone else obsessed with shishito?

Michele Moloney was trained at the Cordon Bleu in Paris and to look through her meticulous notes--carefully sealed in protective plastic--is a window into classic French technique. Now, lucky Santa Barbarans!, she caters and teaches continuing education classes here and we get to learn from her and cook tasty things like roasted beet and pomegranate salad, lemon lavendar cake, delicata squash tart and rosemary olive knots.

We had pan fried shishito peppers last week and I'm hooked! The mild Japanese pepper goes well with bold red wines--just melt some butter in a cast iron skillet, fry until they blister, then sprinkle with salt and pepper--divine. I liked finding something low-cal to serve as an appetizer with wine.

Yesterday, I made a fantastic frittata with them. Gruyeré pairs beautifully with the shishito and where the cheese met the outside rim of the cast iron skillet, it crisped into a delicious crunchy texture. I used my 6" cast iron skillet for this individual frittata.

Shishito and Gruyeré Frittata
2 tablespoons butter
handful shishito peppers
salt and pepper to taste
2 eggs, whisked together
sprig of fresh thyme, destemmed
1/4 cup grated  Gruyeré

Melt the butter in a cast iron skillet and sauté the shishito until they are browned and blistered, stirring to brown evenly. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Cut the stems off and set the peppers aside.

Pour the eggs into the hot skillet, they should sizzle. Turn the heat to low and place the peppers on top. Sprinkle with the thyme, salt and pepper, then the cheese. Put a lid over the pan and cook until the eggs are almost set.

I had this frittata for breakfast with a waffle, but it would be great with a fresh green salad and a glass of bold red wine for lunch or dinner.

I think we can all agree on this proverb: "Vin skal til vinar drekka".  I would have been scratching my head, too, except Clay Thompson, Ph.d, former professor and department chair of Nordic Studies, expert in the esoteric study of runology, plus co-founder and first winemaker of Claiborne & Churchill Vintners, clued me in on the meaning of the runes found on his Runestone wine label. There are three things I love about this bottle of wine. First, the label. The full inscription on the runestone reads: "Claiborne ok Fredericka gerdu vin that. Vin skal til vinar drekka.", which means "Claiborne and Fredericka made this wine. Wine should be drunk with a friend." How cool is that!! Dora in Finding Nemo speaks "whale", but Claiborne speaks "rune". Secondly, "vin" means "wine" in Old Norse and "vinar" means "friend". A great connection.
The third thing I love about this Runestone bottle is that it contains terrific Pinot Noir. The winemaker notes include this: "…there’s no such thing as a “best” wine. However, if there were such a thing as a best wine, this would be it! Put it this way: take the other Pinots we make, add a few layers of complexity, and multiply by six. That’s our 2007 Runestone!" Take a sip of this barrel select pinot and you can understand why Claiborne & Churchill Vintners is known for great pinot--one of theirs won “Best Pinot Noir in California” at the California State Fair. Best Pinot Noir in California! In a state with so many premium pinot producers and regions--that is a stratospheric achievement.

Claiborne & Churchill Vintners also won "Grand Winner" at the international Pinot Noir Summit, where over 200 pinots were tasted by a panel of experts over a 3 month period, as well as many other medals and awards. But, you won't see the acclaim splashed across their website or sense any "attitude" in the tasting room. Claiborne & Churchill Vintners exemplifies everything wonderful about a family owned winery: the friendly staff and owners, the delicious handcrafted wines, the care taken to produce wine sustainably, the "ground-up" success story and the sense of community. While we were there, a wine club member stopped in to pick up his monthly shipment and we had the chance to witness this sense of community and the personal touch that a family winery provides. As Claiborne (or Clay as he is known) explained, "we live here, we party here, you walk in and chances are you get us".

My Inside Wine - Santa Barbara co-founder Lila and I had driven up to Edna Valley for a day. (read about Edna Valley's unique terroir). We stopped into the Claiborne & Churchill Vintners tasting room and had the opportunity to meet Claiborne and his lovely wife Fredericka Churchill and to hear their fascinating story. Clay was a professor of Nordic Studies and Fredericka taught German at the University of Michigan. Despite his success in the academic world, he was not happy with the politicking involved. In 1981, they were driving up from UCLA to Berkeley on an academic trip, when they stopped to taste wines at Edna Valley Vineyards.  As they toured the winery, he was amazed to see that the workers there liked to go to work, rather than dreading it. They seemed to like each other and he got the sense that they felt their life had meaning.  Clay "got the bug" for winemaking that day and determined to make a career change. A Ph.d from Harvard in Nordic Studies was not the usual background for winemaking, but the winemaker and founding partner at Edna Valley Vineyards, Dick Graff, was a Harvard music grad who hired Clay for $6 an hour. Clay went from department chair to "cellar rat" without hesitation.

Clay worked his way up to producing his own wines inside the Edna Valley Vineyards winery to renting a warehouse where he and Fredericka began buying premium local grapes and crafting Alsatian style dry Riesling and Gewurztraminer. Americans tend to think Rieslings are sweet but in fact they can be quite dry with very little residual sugar. These are not sweet dessert wines; they are crisp, fruity, refreshing whites great to pair with food. Their 2001 Dry Riesling is the only American wine to win a Gold Medal at the French Riesling du Monde competition. Besides the aforementioned wines, they produce small lots of Pinot Gris, Dry Muscat, Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon (from grapes grown in the warmer Paso Robles), a Syrah, interesting blended wines, a Sparkling Brut Rosé made every other year, and a number of sweet dessert wines. These small lots sell out quickly as they become available during the year. They still buy 90% of their grapes with long-term relationships with vineyards with their estate vineyard fulfilling the rest of their need.  As Clay said, "it's fun to not be restricted to what you grow".

In 1995 Clay and Fredericka built their winery using straw bale construction. This innovative building is environmentally responsible and energy efficient. The 16" thick walls have four to five times the insulation factor compared to traditional construction. This allows the winery to operate without mechanical heating and cooling. Peer into the tasting room's "truth window" to see the straw bales behind the plaster.

In 2007, Clay promoted his assistant winemaker Coby Parker-Garcia to winemaker, but he, his wife and daughter are still hard at work at the winery. As he said, "there's a lot of pride that goes into to being a family owned winery". Perhaps delegating the winemaking into capable hands leaves Clay more time for another area of expertise--being a "cruciverbalist".  An avid crossword fan, Clay has published his crosswords in the Los Angeles Times and on his "Clueless" wine labels. His latest, the "Clueless White" is sold out. It had a crossword on the label that listed the varietals in the blend when the puzzle was solved.
Here's a puzzle clue of my own: what 3 word name starts with a "C" and denotes a great place to taste well-balanced, beautifully crafted wines? Guess right--and you win!

The Nine Sisters and Edna Valley

I've driven five hours roundtrip to the Antelope Valley to see the rolling hills of the Poppy Preserve incandescent from millions of tiny poppy petals. I've endured the car-sickness-inducing hairpin curves of Jalama Road just to stand on a rocky outlook above Jalama Beach and watch line after line of white capped waves stroke the pristine bay. So why didn't I ever drive the 86 miles from Santa Barbara to Edna Valley to see the "nine sisters" marching in a line from the sea? I could have simply taken the highway 227 cutoff from highway 101 during my countless trips from Southern California to Northern California. It would have shaved 2 miles off my trip.

You may have noticed the chain of peaks extending from Morro Bay into the distance to the south east. They are volcanic plugs--the hardened interior rock of ancient volcanoes that erupted along a series of fault lines over 20 million years ago. The seven "sisters" or morros have two more siblings under the sea, so there are actually nine in all. The first on land is the monumental Morro Bay Rock that rises 576 feet above the bay. The next "sisters": Black Hill, Cerro Cabrillo, Hollister Peak, Cerro Romauldo, Chumash Peak, Bishop Peak, and Cerro San Luis continue in a south-easterly direction, ending with Islay Hill clearly visible beyond the neat, green rows of the 1,200 acre Paragon vineyards.

The peaks are not the only interesting geologic feature of Edna Valley. The soil is mainly comprised of Pismo Formation, created under ancient oceans, with thick deposits of clam and oyster shells up to 60 feet deep. Viniculture has a long history in the area, beginning with the Spanish Mission founded in 1772 in San Luis Obispo, where highly regarded wine was produced from locally planted grapes. Jack and Catherine Niven, along with the founders of Chamisal Vineyards, were pioneers in Edna Valley, planting the Paragon Vineyard in 1973. The Niven family  started with Cabernet Sauvignon, but quickly realized the terroir was perfect for Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. Today, the Paragon Vineyard's largest plantings also include Syrah, Sauvignon Blanc, and Pinot Gris.

The Edna Valley is a long valley that runs from the ocean unobstructed. There is a gap in the mountains along the coast in the Los Osos Valley which acts like a funnel for marine air to flow into the valley. Like the Sta Rita Hills AVA just north of Santa Barbara, the Edna Valley enjoys the benefit of cooling marine air. This brings crispness to the fruit while the extraordinarily long growing season insures development of sugar in the grapes. Edna Valley Vineyard Chardonnay and Pinot Noir vines can begin sending out shoots as early as March and the harvest can run into late October. A combination of the long growing season, the marine/volcanic soil and briny ocean air give the wines concentrated flavor and individualism.

The Edna Valley Vineyard tasting room makes the most of the winery's spectacular view of the seven sisters and the ocean, a mere 7 miles away. Situated on a hill, with floor to ceiling windows, the one-of-a-kind landscape visible from the Hospitality Center is breathtaking. The spacious tasting room is adjoined by a large indoor reception area for weddings and special events as well as an ample outdoor area. Edna Valley Vineyard is consistently rated "Best Tasting Room" in San Luis Obispo by locals and Wine Enthusiast magazine lauds it as "one of the best places in wine country to be married."

By visiting the tasting room, we were able to taste wines only available at their winery, including their tasty Reserve and Estate Pinot Noirs. Tasting Room Manager Blythe Conaway pointed out that the wines are "true to varietal" and consistent year to year. We admired her work environment: a panoramic vista of the peaceful Edna Valley.

The careful attention winemaker Josh Baker gives to the Edna Valley Vineyard wines includes sorting the individual grapes by hand and using new French oak aging barrels for many of the wines, both hallmarks of top notch winemaking and very expensive. I found the pricing of their wines extremely reasonable for the extra care that is taken in the grape growing and winemaking.  A bonus to a visit to Edna Valley Vineyard is their Demonstration Vineyard where you can sample firsthand the difference between 14 different grape varietals. It was interesting to taste the grassy notes in the Sauvignon Blanc grapes and experience first-hand the difference between the Pinot Gris and Pinot Noir grape. Also, 7 different trellis systems are used, so you can see how the manner in which the grapes shoots are trained leads to different configurations in the vines. The view is unparalleled and the Edna Valley Vineyard experience is definitely worth the drive! 

Success! Inside Wine - Santa Barbara

My "baking buddy" Lila and I started a new Meetups group called Inside Wine - Santa Barbara and we had our first event last Thursday. It was a great success! 60 people attended, they loved the wines and the food. Here are some of there rave reviews:

What an amazing evening!! The organizers are very wine savvy, offering us a wide variety of choices and background with each wine. The appetizers were scrumptious, especially loving the fig topped brochetta!! -- Elvina

I had a great time looking forward to the next meetup! -- Robin

This was an absolutely wonderful event! Not only was it in a fabulous venue, but it was great to make some new friends AND learn about the wine being poured. PLUS - I won the "mystery wine" contest -- how cool is THAT! Thanks so much, Tama & Lila for a great event. I'm looking forward to future events!  -- Pattie

Had a great time! -- Jennifer

Great evening out, Good wine, food and presentation. Very gracious sponser! Enjoyed the evening, nice group of people, First meet-up it was a great success! Glad I joined. -- Sandy

I made three kinds of focaccia: caramelized onion cooked with Passito, sun-dried tomato with Romano cheese, and olive oil and rosemary, also the cucumber/roasted beet/creme fraiche appetizers shown below. Lila made amazing crostini with sundried tomato and sweet figs in balsalmic. Yum!

Tama's Roasted Beet and Cucumber Appetizer:
Ingredients For the Roasted Beet:
1 large beet, peeled
approximately 1 tablespoon chopped rosemary
spray olive oil
salt and freshly ground pepper

Ingredients For the Appetizer:
1 cooked beet
1 Japanese cucumber (with edible skin)
1/2 cup sour cream (regular or Tofutti) OR 1/2 cup soft goat cheese OR crème fraîche
1 slice lox, minced
approximately a dozen chive stems
1 teaspoon dill
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
1/2 teaspoon or more of salt, to taste

Directions For the Roasted Beet:
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Cut the peeled beet in quarters, then slice each half into 1/4" slices. Put on a baking tray (use a piece of foil between the tray and the beets for easier clean-up) and spray the beets all over with olive oil, sprinkle with rosemary, salt and pepper, then toss to coat. Roast in a 350 degree oven for an hour or until tender on the inside and slightly caramelized on the outside, turning once or twice during the roasting process.

Directions For the Appetizer:
Slice the cucumber into 1/4" slices. Cut off the top 2" of the chives and set aside. Slice the rest of the chives thinly. Mix the sour cream, lox, chives, dill, salt and pepper. Adjust seasonings--the mixture should be slightly on the salty side. Spoon a bit of the sour cream mixture on each cucumber slice and top with two slices of roasted beet. Slice the reserved chive tops lengthwise and use to decorate the appetizer.

These pair with a number of wines--for a red, Pinot Noir, for a white, an Albarino.

Versailles - The Best Cuban Lemon Garlic Chicken In California!

I don't miss living in L.A. The traffic, the insane drivers (you will be insane, too, if you have to battle other drivers for hours each week), the smog, the endless rows of ugly stucco mini-malls and potholed streets.

But, I do miss the fantastic ethnic restaurants. Not quite as diverse as San Francisco, Los Angeles encompasses a cornucopia of mom-and-pop restaurants started by immigrants from around the globe. Living in Culver City, my two favorite places were Emerald Thai and Versailles. The latter is a Cuban restaurant and it looks like all the photos I've seen of Havana eateries--the brightly colored walls, the lazy ceiling fans, the cheap tables and a bevy of white-shirted, black-panted waiters with towels slung around their arm.

The restaurant Versailles makes the best chicken I've had anywhere--very lemony and redolent of garlic--the skin crispy and the meat juicy and tender. I gave up eating chicken and meat long ago, but the greedy foodie in me couldn't resist when I had to drive past Culver City at lunchtime. I had to go in and taste it one more time!

I came home and made my own version, which I served to my boyfriend and his family. I stuck to my beans and rice this time, but was lauded for this Versailles-style lemon garlic chicken recipe. My boyfriend's dad said it was the best chicken he'd ever had! Try it and see what you think.

Tama's Versaille-Style Cuban Chicken In Lemon Garlic Sauce:

Ingredients For the Mojo Sauce (pronounced moe-hoe):
zest of 2 oranges
juice of 2 oranges (about 3/4 cup)
zest of 4 lemons
juice of 12 Meyer lemons (about 1 1/2 cups)
1 tablespoon ground oregano
1/4 cup chopped white onion
1 1/2 heads of garlic
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground pepper

Ingredients For the Chicken:
4 chicken breasts, bone-in
1/2 cup butter, clarified
1/4 cup good white wine
1 tablespoon flour
a slice of onion, quartered, for garnish

Directions For the Mojo Sauce:
Peel the garlic. Set aside one third of the cloves; slice the rest. In a blender or food processor, puree the garlic, zest, juice, oregano, onion, salt and pepper until smooth and creamy. Set half aside. Use the other half to marinate the chicken in a large glass bowl for an hour, turning twice during this period so the chicken marinates evenly.

Directions For the  Chicken:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. After marinating, remove the chicken to a tray or platter lined with paper towels and blot to dry. Pour the marinade from the bowl into a 9" x 13" glass baking dish.

Melt the butter in a large frying pan (cast iron pan works the best). When the butter bubbles, add the chicken, skin side down. Sear until golden brown, turning to sear the chicken on all sides. Turn off the heat under the frying pan so it can cool. Put the chicken into the baking dish, with skin facing up.

Carefully pour the reserved marinade into the frying pan (it will spatter if the pan is still very hot), stirring it into the butter. Whisk the flour into the wine and add to the sauce. Bring it to a low boil for 2-3 minutes, whisking occasionally to incorporate the flour as it thickens. Adjust the seasonings--the sauce should be VERY lemony.

Pour the sauce over the chicken, coating all the pieces. Tuck the reserved garlic cloves around the chicken breasts. Bake for 45 minutes - 1 hour until the chicken is cooked through (internal temperature of 165 degrees). During baking, baste the chicken frequently. When the chicken is done, plate it on a deep dish pouring the rest of the sauce over it. Garnish with the onion slices. Serve with black beans and rice.


Notes: Chicken cooked with the bone in is always more flavorful than boneless. You can make this recipe with boneless breasts, but they will not be as divine. Bake for only 10-15 minutes. Use Meyer lemons, which are sweeter and more floral than ordinary lemons. If you must use regular lemons--Eureka or Lisbon--add a bit of sugar to the sauce. You can start with a tablespoon, then adjust to taste. Use clarified butter for a smooth sauce without foaming--look here on how to clarify butter. Use a good quality, buttery Chardonnay to cook with and to pair with the dish. Any off-flavors in the wine will show up in the sauce!

Sunstone Winery - "Sunlight Into Wine"

A half hour scenic drive north on Highway 154 from Santa Barbara will drop you into the Santa Ynez Valley. Sunstone Winery is one of the closest to Santa Barbara, just past the turnoff to highway 246.  Go past the "wild west" town of Santa Ynez and the mammoth Chumash Casino, undergoing renovation, then turn left on Refugio Road. You'll enter an area that feels like a world unto its own. Expansive hills slope gently towards the Santa Ynez River, with a dramatic backdrop of the Santa Ynez Mountains, completely unmarked by development. No wonder Fred and Linda Rice fell in love with the place when they discovered it in the 1980's and decided to purchase an abandoned horse ranch. Linda was known as "The Visionary" and what she had envisioned for the property was a palatial, but comfortable home in the style of the grand villas of Italy or the chateaus of France.

Fortunately, as a successful contractor, Fred had the means to build their dream. As the couple travelled in France, they found architectural treasures in reclamation yards: limestone blocks, heavy hand-carved beams from Queen Victoria’s lavender factory, hand-formed roof tiles, a prison cell door from Normandy constructed during Napoleon’s reign. They shipped forty-five containers, each containing 40,000 pounds of material, from Europe to build their dream home.

I was able to tour the Villa thanks to the friendly Sunstone Events Director Annamarie Kostura, whom I met at the Santa Ynez Valley Visitor's Association new member mixer. Due to a combination of the hit movie "Sideways" and the high ratings awarded Santa Ynez Valley wines, tourism has been booming in the Valley. Wineries, hotels, and business owners formed the SYVVA to promote managed growth in the Valley. As  Board President John Kochis pointed out, "Growth will happen; you can't keep people away from a beautiful place like this, but we are looking at quality, not quantity growth".
"Stunning" is not hyperbole when describing an architectural marvel that is castle-like due to its grandeur, the interior and exterior limestone, the soaring ceilings and the immense windows through which light streams.  All I can say is if you live the lifestyle of the 1%, the entire 8,500 square foot Villa can be yours for $15,000 a night: all five spacious suites, the ample grounds, the outdoor wood-burning pizza oven, bocce court and the kitchen with a 1,000 year old stone sink from France and floor-to-ceiling windows leading to a Tuscan-style courtyard with bocce ball court, hedged with lavendar and rosemary. Or, for considerably less money, you can stay in one of the enormous suites, each with a separate entrance, which Bion's wife Anna has decorated in comfortable luxury, with big puffy couches to sink into while reading a book by the fireplace, big soaking tubs, and luxury linens.  As I was there, workers were readying an expanse of lawn for an outdoor wedding, which will be picture-perfect with the Villa and the spectacular views of vineyards and mountains.

I hadn't visited Sunstone before; I didn't realize a place like it existed outside of Napa. To enter the tasting room, you walk through a natural wall of towering oaks, then walk past a classic Provençal French kitchen with copper pots and braided garlic hanging over a rustic wood table, to a long bar cheerfully lit with candles and wall sconces. Two stone barrel-aging caves, over 5,000 square feet in size, have been carved into the hillside, and a private tasting room displays racks of verticals of Sunstone's wines. The long bar opens to a sunny patio with a view of the lower half of the 28-acre vineyards and the spectacular mountain backdrop. It's no wonder Sunstone Winery was named “Best Tasting Room” in the Santa Barbara Independent reader poll.

Sadly, Linda Rice passed away in 2010. The Rice family continues to run Sunstone, one of the few family-owned and managed wineries in the Valley, as many others have been bought by corporations. Fred and Linda's son Bion is President and CEO of Sunstone. The family has moved from the Villa and it is now being transformed into an exclusive event destination for wine pairing dinners, wine country accommodations, weddings and corporate events.

From the beginning, the vineyards have been grown without pesticides, herbicides or synthetic fungicides. The Rice family have been careful stewards of the land, guarding the health of the vineyards, workers and consumers by being certified 100% organic. Taste Sunstone's wines at their tasting room, especially their rich Rhone varietals, including their award-winning Merlto, Viognier and Syrah. By the way, I was happy to see a copy of Touring & Tasting in the Villa's kitchen!