Sip This: Shrub & Co. Spicy Ginger Shrub

Shrub & Co. Spicy Ginger Shrub: It’s that time of year when a cocktail that borders on the medicinal makes you feel better about drinking, if not actually healthier. So why not use a shrub, the reinvented take on a vinegar-based concoction Colonials made to preserve fruit back in the day? Today shrubs provide a yummy charge to drinks, something between bitters and wine.

Want to read the rest then do so at the Indy's site.

Rasi Wine: A Barrel into a Career

A mere barrel into her solo winemaking career, Rachel Silkowski, 25, has opted to name her project Rasi Wine Company. Sure, that comes from the first two letters of her names, but she pronounces it "racy" and says, "I chose to name my wine company Rasi because the definition of the term represents the style of wine that I set out to make. The definition, which is included on the back label is: 'full of zest of vigor; having a strongly marked quality; piquant; risqué, suggestive; having the distinctive quality of something in its original or most characteristic form.'"

Want to read the rest then do so at the KCET Food Blog.

Barbareño Does Santa Barbara by the Book

At one point during my interview with Julian Martinez and Jesse Gaddy — the two twentysomethings behind the new Barbareño restaurant in the old yet very remodeled D’Vine Café space at De la Vina and Canon Perdido streets — the latter leaves abruptly, only to return with a heavy tome that he tosses onto the table. The book, which lands with a dull thud, is beloved historian Walter A. Tompkins’s The Yankee Barbareños: The Americanization of Santa Barbara County, California 1796-1925. “So many books we just read and read,” said head chef Martinez about their search for a concept and name. “The book’s pretty interesting, pretty dry,” adds Gaddy, the general manager, before Martinez concludes, “But now we’re filled with plenty of fun facts.”

Want to read the rest then do so at the Indy's site.

Sip This: Roark Sauvignon Blanc

Roark Wine Company Sauvignon Blanc, Happy Canyon 2013: When a young winemaker is such a garagiste that he’s best known for his chenin blanc, that’s a hint he’s not making much juice. But such is the case with the talented Ryan Roark, who likes to lease rows where he can farm and do everything himself.

Want to read the rest then do so at the Indy's site.

What's in a Glass? Testing Riedel

Let's face it -- convincing people that they need to buy not just one, but multiples, of your product, is brilliant business (and if you don't believe that, Ty Warner has some Beanie Babies to sell you). That must have been crystal clear to the Riedel Family, especially when Georg Riedel decided that different varietals of wine required different glasses to be enjoyed fully. As the tenth generation of what he calls "a dinosaur entrepreneur family of Europe," Riedel spreads the gospel of varietal-specific glassware, as he did at a recent symposium sponsored by the Santa Barbara Vintners for wine industry folk in Solvang. "I am in command of the liquid flow to your palate," he told us as we sat before our own sets of three of his glasses. "And you'll say, nonsense...bullshit."

Want to read the rest then do so at KCET's Food Blog.

The Many Wines of Margerum

It only just seems like you can't throw a rock in Santa Barbara without breaking a bottle of wine made by Doug Margerum. I had him explain his busy, busy slate -- and he's also still co-owner of the beloved Wine Cask restaurant too, with Mitchell Sjerven- - in a recent email interview. "I, of course, make wine for my labels -- Margerum, Barden (Barden is my middle name) and these are the wines (pinot noir, chardonnay, and syrah) that are from Santa Rita Hills, and Cent'Anni (a partnership [centered on Sangiovese] with the vineyard owner). The Margerum wines are poured in the Margerum Tasting Room and the Margerum reserve wines, Barden and Cent'Anni, are poured at MWC32. I am the wine maker for Jamie Slone Wines and Happy Canyon Vineyards. I also consult for La Encantada Vineyard."

Want to read the rest then do so at the KCET Food Blog.

A Not So Plain Plantain

Sorry it's taken so long, but as a sort of 2015 resolution (to make up nice with my readers--both of you), I wanted to write a bit about my favorite meal of 2014. Particularly since it's breakfast, and I'm usually not a huge breakfast person. Now I love a Renaud's croissant as much as the next butter-adoring person short a plane ticket to Paris, but breakfast mostly seems like fuel than fuss, if you ask me.

And then there's the Costa Rican Breakfast, as its billed on the menu of the utterly fabulous Gaia Hotel and Resort near Manuel Antonio in Costa Rica. That's it in the photo, not showing anywhere near as good as it tastes. The mound is formed by plantains caramelized to the point you'll never need bacon again, almost a bit crunchy but definitely, rewardingly chewy, both sweet and savory at once (and isn't that the goal for most delicious food?). Beneath the plantains is a black bean and rice mixture cooked perfectly, the beans still plump and distinct and flavorful, a trio of adjectives most beans fail to achieve. There's onions and sweet peppers and cilantro in the mix, too, all providing support without overwhelming with their own often dominant characteristics. (Cilantro is so often a rug of flavor cooks hide their other messes under.) 

Off to the right are the two eggs over-easy, as asked. But look at that fry on them, giving their overall smoothness a bit of texture that certainly doesn't hurt. And at this point where every dish no matter the meal seems to come with an egg atop so you can yolk all over yerself, we all know the glories of a bit of eggy goo that adds to the richness of, say, some rice and beans.

Those corn cakes atop aren't just an afterthought, either, despite being wisely just the right size and not an attempt to make you think you're stuffed. They call them sour cream and tortilla wedges, and no doubt that cream is what elevates them from being mere fat tortillas, adding a lightness and brightness. Plus their fine in the yolk that runs, too.

Of course, one reason this breakfast is so good is you have it in an open air restaurant with a view out over the rainforest to the nearby Pacific. So that's pretty hard to beat, but the food doesn't just ride on the location--Gaia is a place of detail and comfort and pleasure.

And a place trying to re-establish scarlet macaws to a region of Costa Rican where they've been missing thanks to man for some decades. So while you're eating, every once in a while you'll see blurs like those below zoom by, making their wonderful racket that practically sounds as red as they are. So that's your breakfast dessert.