Middle America, Calif.

September 10

Last Friday, after learning about almonds' nutritional (they're filling, have protein and lots of good fats as well as nice micronutrients) and beauty-enhancing attributes (basically, they have lots of Vitamin E, but you can also smash them and use them to exfoliate if you want to), we went to Vino Piazza, charmingly fractured Italian for "Wine Plaza."
There four of the six wineries that rent space there stayed open for us to try their wines. So I met giggling Craig Watts, the owner of Watts Winery, Matthew the perpetual student, who was pouring wine for Olde Lockeford Winery, whose owner is an amateur paleontologist, and so many of the wine labels feature prehistoric creatures (a trilobite on one, a saber-toothed tiger skull on another, a triceratops skull on a third); and the father-son team that runs La Vida Dulce winery.
I didn’t make it to the fourth winery.
California’s central valley is America’s produce basket, but its grapes are mostly used for blending into inexpensive vintages. Over the past decade or so, however, some of the growers have taken to bottling their own stuff – with mixed results, for sure, but some of it is tasty. But what was really fun about Vino Piazza was the people pouring the wine, who had the pride of winemakers of more prestigious wine-growing regions without the pomp.
They had the straightforwardness mixed in with quirky idiosyncrasies that make exploring the United States a continuous thrill and adventure.
That vision of the central valley was reinforced at dinner, which was at Harmony Wynelands in Lodi. It’s a vineyard whose spokesman, surfer and would-be Hawaiian Shaun MacKay, is the stepson of owner Bob Hartzell. With very little prompting, Bob will sidle up to the reception hall's organ, for which the hall was built in 1921. In fact, the organ’s pipes fill two rooms adjacent to the hall.
Why does a Lodi winery have a gigantic organ? Why not? They also feature silent films accompanied by the organ four times a year.

The Artist Chef new Calling Card

The bees are fine

September 7
(please see an August 11 2008 update below)

I'm in Lodi, Calif., at the moment, a guest of the Almond Board of California, which has flown out 20 some odd journalists from the U.S. and Canada to learn all about almonds.
California is currently in the midst of its biggest almond harvest in history. It's a bumper crop due to a confluence of excellent weather conditions and the fact that more trees were planted four years ago in response to increased demand, and it takes four years for an almond tree to bear commercially useful levels of nuts.
But here's the thing. The California almond industry is the beekeeper industry's largest client. That's because almonds are completely dependent on bees for the cross-polination that they need, and so almond growers bring in between eight and 12 bee boxes per acre of trees when they're in bloom in early spring.
So naturally I asked how they were coping with the global bee die-off, and the almond industry folks said it wasn't an issue -- that though the lack of bees has been widely reported, and some beekeepers have had trouble keeping their charges alive, in fact there is no shortage of bees.
And this also isn't the first time lots of honeybees have died. Old-timers report that something similar happened a few decades ago, and records show that it also happened in the 19th century.
Some 500,000 acres of Callifornia is planted with almond trees, and they all had enough bees.
But the almond board does pay close attention to the bees. In fact, it claims to do the most bee research in the country.
One representative from the almond board told me last night at dinner that that was due in part to the fact that the Honey Board is dysfunctional, but I have no way of knowing whether that's true or not. I had been wondering why no one from that board had bothered to comment on the bee die-off. You'd think they would have said something.
Here's something else: Almond hulls, which are used for cattle feed, were being sold at record-prices last year. I asked if that was because of the earmarking of some corn (also used in cattle feed, obviously) for ethanol, but they didn't have an answer for me.
Seems logical, though.

Last night we had dinner at a Sicilian restaurant in Elk Grove called Palermo.

Here's what we ate:

Tomato bruschetta
Slad with goat cheese and almond slivers
Thinly sliced salmon with arugula, lemon juice, capers and almonds
Duck tortelloni with mushrooms and almonds, cooked in tomato sauce
Farfalle gratinate with cream, porcini mushrooms, ham and chicken in almond crust
salmon with dried porcini mushrooms and ground almonds, served with risotto (with almonds in it) and cranberry-almond sauce.
Tiramisu
Spumoni with almonds

I skipped breakfast, but I did eat a couple handfuls of almonds
Lunch was a salad with shrimp, avocado and almonds, followed by creme brulee topped with fruit but not almonds.
Then we had a tasting of almond products, and now I'm off to drink wine, to be followed by dinner that likely also will include some almonds, but I'll let you know.

August 11, 2008 update

There might not be a shortage of bees for big customers like the almond board, but the National Honey Board did point me to some data about domestic honey production over the past 50 years, and the picture’s actually pretty grim — so grim that I made a chart.

Paella Valenciana II

Cooking paella is a burden for others, but not for me. I feel it's because my paella seems to get better and better the more i cook it. I feel proud because mine is better than most of the ones I've tasted. I can claim the authenticity of this Spanish dish I prepare. Long hours of preparation and cooking plus the finest ingredients are the reasons why my Paella is so good. The prawn, squid, clams mexican chorizo, bellpepper, jalapeno, huge garlic, onion, plump tomatoes, black and green olives, wine, sherry, saffron, paprika, black pepper, cumin, organic rice or jasmine rice and the hard-boiled egg on top are the complete cast of my very appetizing paella. And don't forget to squeeze some lime before eating it.

Mangut Jantung Pisang

Bahan-bahan :

• Jantung pisang
• 1 ons teri medan
• santan dari 1/2 butir kelapa
• 1 batang serai
• 2 lbr daun salam
• 2 lbr daun jeruk
• 1/2 liter air

Bumbu halus :

• 5 siung bawang putih
• 1 ruas jari kencur
• 1 biji cabe merah besar
• garam
• gula

Cooking directions :

1. Sebelum dimasak, rebus dulu jantung pisang hingga empuk
2. Teri medan digoreng hingga kering setelah itu masukkan bumbu halus, salam, sereh, daun jeruk tumis hingga harum baunya
3. Masukkan santan dan beri air, tunggu hingga santan mendidih
4. Masukkan jantung pisang yg sudah direbus tadi dan dipotong2 sesuai selera kedlm wajan
5. Masak hingga matang dan bumbu menyerap
6. Sajikan