Sip This: Balvenie Caribbean Cask

The Balvenie 14-Year-Old Caribbean Cask So people actually market “summer whiskeys” now. You can sort of see why with this pour, an odd but far from ugly duckling that gives you a Speyside single malt that seems to have swam via the Caribbean — it has been finished in American oak rum casks.

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

Deliciously Dario

If you’ve ever been to one of Santa Barbara’s countless fundraising-with-food events, then you’ve had this moment. There’s a crowd, so you can’t quite see what booth you’re headed to, but you certainly can smell it. Woody, slightly evergreen, enveloping and enticing, mildly minty, musky — it’s sage, you realize, crisped in brown butter. Then you reach for Ca’ Dario’s trademark dish, ravioli al burro e salvia, and eat the pasta pillows with the same utter joy you’ve experienced at similar festivals before. We awarded the dish one of The Santa Barbara Independent’s first Foodie Awards for good reason.

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

Basil So Nasal (Yes, This Is a Cocktail)

There's always that temptation to save dinner's leftovers for tomorrow's breakfast scramble, or if there's enough remaining, the next supper. My suggestion is this--throw those leftovers into a cocktail. Tonight our daughter and daughter-in-law kindly made us a scrumptious vegetable red curry dinner that got some Thai basil as garnish. So while we devoured every last curry drop, we still had a bit of the basil left.

I'm drinking it right now. I had a bag of limes that desperately asked to be juiced, and I had that lovely curry still warming my palate. You can guess where the flavor profile will go from there for The Curiouser Cocktail. And yes, buy some Aperol. Think of it as Campari light (not lite)--less alcohol, less bitters, less color. But lots of exotic citrus and spice. It gives the ginger, lime, and basil mid-range they'd never have on their own. As for that shrub, you can buy it in Santa Barbara at Still, where all you discerning drinkers should be shopping.

The Curiouser Cocktail

(makes two drinks)

2 oz. fresh squeezed lime juice
1 TBS. or so of torn Thai basil leaves
4 oz vodka (I used Snow Leopard)
1 oz. ginger shrub (I used the one by Shrub & Co.)
1 oz. Aperol

Muddle the basil in the lime juice. Add the vodka, ginger shrub, and Aperol, ice, and shake well. Strain with a mesh (to keep out all the torn basil) into two old-fashioned glasses that each have one large ice cube. Garnish with a star anise per drink, if you got them, but that's all for added aromatics, a nice plus but not crucial.

Savoring a Solvang Spring

On Alamo Pintado Road, the Buttonwood Farm-Winery-Vineyard is a secret in plain sight. If you pull in to the tasting room, then walk out back, the rest of Solvang seems to fall away. Our brief bursts of rain turned the thirsty hills gushingly green; the herb garden did its always seasonally blooming thing; goats and their kids scrambled along the rolling landscape. Pastoral at its picture perfect. Such was the case last Saturday for Buttonwood's Taste of Solvang dinner, when all the makings came from within 25 miles of the lovely veranda we all sat upon for the five-course meal (preceded by some goat cheese sprinkled with farm-made olive oil and fresh herbs paired with the 2014 Sauv Blanc, a snack I could easily have made a dinner of all by itself).

Now I could take you through the meal course-by-course, and not talking at all about the charred lamb chops with tomatillo harissa atop canary bean hummus you scooped with fresh, grilled naan hurts a bit, as I hadn't had lamb quite that vivid in years.

But no, I want to talk about salad. Because we so often don't, and should, but too often can't beyond to say, "Yeah, there was one." But what Chef Conrad Gonzales of Vallefresh did with this one, well, you can see it above, and that's one crucial component. Take that pink paint. Sure, too many kitchens smear a dish without something before sending it out, thinking some color is everything, as if cooking for Instagram. But this beet-infused goat cheese you needed to scrape off the plate, it was so tasty, and its coral pink echoed the zingy Buttonwood Syrah Rose. (Karen Steinwachs is making some rocking wines that cry out for delicious food. Their cries got more than answered all evening.)

What's more, it's a tad early for strawberries of course. So to remedy that possible less-than-peak problem, Gonzales pickled them. Berry sweet up to the point they could manage, then the vinegar kicked in, just enough to make you remember how delicious Balsamic is on strawberries. That all gets cut by the greens, a mix of market and foraged, lettuce and herb, leaf and flower. So many textures, flavors, the idea of salad expanding. The fine fat of avocado. The crunch of a toss of toasted almonds. A pickled carrot, so much earth. And the hardboiled egg, from the farm, of course, so the yolk is the yellow of a rain slicker.

It's something to get the chance to devour spring.

Sip This: The Withers Ruben

The Withers Ruben El Dorado Mourvèdre Blend 2013: While it’s more typical to lead your Rhône blend with grenache, the very talented team at The Withers (the tallest part of the horse, hence wines that aim high) has opted to feature mourvèdre (82% of the blend) in this MGS, as it were. That makes Ruben deep, dark, and delicious, with enticing earthy and brambly notes.

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

Pico Opens in Los Alamos General Store

It may be the best defense when opening a new restaurant: Walk the floor holding your one-month-old. Who’d be callous enough to say anything even slightly mean to you?

But while Will Henry and Kali Kopley did take turns holding their taking-it-all-in daughter, Winslow, at the recent soft opening of their new restaurant, Pico, they weren’t protecting themselves from anything. Instead, the husband-wife-kid trio symbolized just how homey this addition to the burgeoning Los Alamos scene intends to be.

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

Sip This: Bubble Shack Brut Rose

The Bubble Shack Fesstivity Brut Rosé 2014: Fesstivity should be the clue — this sparkling is an effort of Fess Parker family siblings Ashley Parker-Snider (executive vice president) and Eli Parker (currently director of vineyard operations). With more than 600 acres to tap, there’s plenty of vineyard to manage, and luckily some of the best led to this wine, as it’s sourced from pinot noir grown in the Rio Vista Vineyard of the Sta. Rita Hills.

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