Cooking with Julie

So here I am in Napa! Our flights were pretty uneventful. Flew through Las Vegas and were delayed about 50 minutes (to be expected. At this point I only expect my flights to both be on time about 50% of the time. I say "both" because I've also discovered that I can't fly direct practically anywhere I ever want to go unless it's to London or within Europe. That's just my life.), so that was pretty boring. Gambling age in Vegas is 21, so no drinking AND no gambling which left me with the same boring layover that I would've had to deal with in any other airport. We got in to Sacramento around 11:20 and Hagan's dad and brother, Kevin, picked us up. I was out of it for most of the trip to Napa, but tried to participate in conversation when possible; I had completely ignored the fact that we were going to be changing time zones by 2 hours this time (leaving me 3 hours from home time, 2 from Hendrix time), and I'm not exactly a giant bowl of fun by the time 2 in the morning rolls around normally, let alone after I've been chilling in airports for hours. Arrived safely at Hagan's house (AKA the House of Hagans as my friends at school have been calling it), met the doggies and then went promptly to bed.

Woke up early yesterday morning to get to our cooking class with plenty of time. Left the house a few mins after 8 and went to a bakery called Sweetie Pies that was delicious. I had a lemon poppy seed scone that had a lemon glaze over it and it was so, so good. Then we were off to the Oxbow Public Market to meet up with Julie, our cooking teacher. Oxbow is the local farmer's market, I guess, but it's way fancier than just that. The vendors have permanent stores set up inside with all kinds of delicious things to eat, and we visited most of them to buy supplies for the meal we would be cooking with Julie Logue-Riordan. Started off at the Cheese vendor and sampled a bunch of locally produced cheeses, some from cow milk, others from goat milk, and basically just fell back in love with cheese (I did at least). From there, The Fatted Calf to buy prosciutto and a cured bacon. Then back inside for produce: asparagus, nectarines, artichokes. On to the Five Dot Ranch stand just to admire the cuts of beef on display (we didn't buy any, but I WANTED TO), and then across the way to the spice stand. I guess I'm just a simple girl, but I always thought that there was only one kind of salt. Two if we want to count sea salt as a separate thing. Boy, was I wrong. There were black salts and white salts and pink salts and grey salts, bright red salts, blueish salts, purple salts. Salts made with truffles, salts made with hibiscus. It was mind blowing (don't even get me started on the 2394823596234 varieties of curry). We bought some Black Cypruss salt, a flaky black salt that looked kinda like flakes of obsidian to me, and some red hibiscus salt that was more powdery (finer grains, I guess) than your average kosher salt. Visited Annette's, the chocolatier at Oxbow, and tried to not give in to my desire to buy the ridiculously expensive chocolate covered almonds. I was successful... for now. Stopped at the Olive Press, an olive oil company, and talked to the lady about their various types of oil. One of them, Mission, is pressed from a local olive. It was originally a European variety, but it has mutated and spliced with other local plants over time and become its own local variety (pretty neat).

Anyway, successful trip to Oxbow. We left around 10:30 to head over to Groth's Winery for our wine tasting. We sampled two white wines and two red, plus had a sampling of the foods we bought at Oxbow to see which wines best paired with them (some of the cheese, prosciutto, and two types of chocolate). Whites were Saugivnon Blanc, Chardonnay, Reds were both Cabernet Sauvignons mixed with Merlot (two different percentages and vintages). I've decided that I'm a white wine drinker.

After the tasting, we headed to Julie's house to start cooking! Rachel and Susan, the mother/daughter duo that was also in our cooking class, were from suburban New York. Total Jews, as Hagan put it (he's allowed, since he's also Jewish). Though Hagan also seems to think that every person who lives in New York is Jewish. I digress.

Menu:
Herb Salad with Tangerines
Frico Baskets
Vanilla Vinaigrette
Fresh Egg Pasta
Sauce with Asparagus, Lemon and Cream
Queen of Napa cake

We started out by taking a tour of Julie's garden and gathering leafy things for the salad and for garnish. Got lemons, chives, plus all the salad greens straight from her garden. Then we moved on to making our egg pasta dough as a group, and then broke up to make the individual dishes. Hagan and I were on cake and pasta sauce duty, while Susan and Rachel had salad and dressing, as well as finishing the pasta prep (rolling it out and cutting into pasta shape). Alicia, the cooking helper, prepped most of the ingredients/implements of destruction (or construction? or instruction?) and was on duty for wine refills. She was so sweet and nice and wonderful. She was flitting around the whole time taking pictures in between taking care of all our dirty cooking implements, and started doing videos after I mentioned our Cooking Local project. She got so excited about it, and really took the time to focus on Hagan and me, along with the promise that she would email the pictures and videos to me. Kick ass!

Anyway, we cooked and ate all day and it was wonderful. Meal turned out fantastically, I learned how to blanch almonds (among other things), and I have a new appreciation for how a good knife can make SUCH a difference in prep time. We finished at Julies after 5 (LONG day for her), stuffed to the gills with delicious, local food.

After leaving, Hagan took me on a grand tour of the Valley. We went to his family's ranch (where his sister, Jen, lives and takes care of her horses and the many others that stable there), and then up to Yountville to drive by The French Laundry and Bouchon, two restaurants owned by Chef Thomas Keller. French Laundry has literally been ranked as the top restaurant in the world more than once, and is consistently rated as one of the top 10. Legit. We will not be dining there, as we would like to have money to pay for more than one meal in our time here, but we still checked it out. Awesome. Stopped by Bouchon's bakery before we left and bought a little chocolate ganache that we have yet to eat. Will give you an update once its deliciousness has crossed my lips.

Hagan's dad called right after we left Julie's house, asking us to dinner, so we eventually headed back down to the homestead to meet up with his dad and step mom. We went to a place called Norman Rose Tavern for a late dinner and ate some more tasty food. Unfortunately, the lead in to that food eating was preceded by nearly an hour wait to be seated. The servers were really nice about it, but their guesstimates for when we would be seated weren't so hot. Had a yummy blue cheeseburger made from Five Dot Ranch beef, with grilled onions on top, and some REALLY good fries. Johnny (Hagan's step mom) and I were joking about the fries while we were waiting to be seated, saying that if the fries were good, it would all have been worthwhile; it was worthwhile.

We arrived at the tavern around 7:30, were seated close to 8:30, were out and back at Hagan's house close to 10. I was wiped out, and Hagan seemed tired too, but we had promised his best friend, Andrew, that we'd be over to visit. So we headed out to Andrew's house and I met him, Angela and Rachel, three of Hagan's best friends from home. They were all so nice, but I kept falling asleep on the couch so we left and headed back to his house. STRAIGHT to bed, and had an awesome night's sleep.

While we were at the ranch, the rain that had been promised started up and continued up through to this morning. Hagan has ever-so-patiently been waiting for me to finish with this post before we leave for breakfast. Today is looking to be pretty unstructured. We're gonna go to another bakery for breakfast and then head to the CIA (Culinary Institute of America) to check things out there and maybe talk with some people. We've got two meetings scheduled for tomorrow, but today is more about just roaming and visiting restaurants and talking to anyone who will talk to us about sustainable, local farming.

Food calls!