The Knife

I might buy this even if the wine is awful

2008-11-14T09:28:40-08:00

It's the Vicktory Dogs wine collection.

Vicktory as in Michael Vick, disgraced football player. There's a series of 22 images "celebrating 22 of the dogs rescued from Michael Vick's property." And to be honest, I have my doubts about the wine; it's produced by Carivintas Winery, which describes itself as "your place to purchase premium wine and celebrate the unique bond we have with dogs.... No two of our wines will ever be the same."

More specifically:

we partner with some of the best established and up-and-coming winemakers in California. Through our Guest Winemaker Program we work with established award-winning winemakers on a rotating basis. Each winemaker is tasked with creating one or more wines for our collections. To date we have consulted with the likes of Stephan Bedford (Bedford Thompson Winery), Ethan Lindquist (Ethan Wines), David Dascomb (East Valley Vineyards), and Daniel Cederquist (Balletto Vineyards, Deloach Vineyards [9 times Winery of the Year], et al).

Well, OK... but what's in this bottle?

2006 Tempranillo, Santa Barbara County

Aromas of berryish fruit, herbaceousness, and an earthy-leathery minerality. This wine has a bold taste and strong mouth feel that lend well to very flavorful foods such as blackened steak, or cajun-spiced pasta or jambalaya. Try it with some grilled asparagus over a bed of steamed arugula, note how the herbaceous character of the wine blends perfectly with the dish. Enjoy now through 2010.

Which is, basically, the Wikipedia description for any Temperanillo. So if you buy this at $40 a pop, you're buying it for the bottle and the knowledge that part of the money goes to animal shelters. Intellectually, it's probably smarter to spend $20 on a wine you know and donate the other $20 yourself. Intellectually.

However, dogs aren't terribly intellectual. And that's a pretty nifty dog painting.

Takeout sushi, Nozawa style: Bully for you

2008-10-24T14:55:43-07:00

Bloody hell, that was good.

Quick backstory: A couple of weeks ago, I got a call from the PR people at Sugarfish, the restaurant owned by Kazunori Ozawa of Sushi Nozawa (who also, as it happens, is profiled today in a WSJ piece, "Sushi Bullies"). They were starting takeout service; would I like to receive a free lunch? Why, yes, I would. Over the years, I have (happily) spent thousands of dollars at his restaurant, where a request for takeout could get you kicked out. So, yeah, free Nozawa at my desk? Bring it on.

And then something odd happened: I completely forgot about it. In the last two weeks I have traveled to Texas, attended a conference and launched another blog. I haven't even thought about writing a Knife post; I haven't thought much about food. I have pages of Eater LA entries to catch up on.

Cut to today, about 30 minutes ago. I emerge from two back-to-back meetings with my blood sugar grazing the floor. And at my cubicle is a rectangular white cardboard box sealed with the Sugarfish logo. Inside are crab and toro cut rolls; tuna sashimi; salmon; albacore and halibut sushi. Edamame. Wasabi and pickled ginger. Soy sauce and ponzu.

Good God. Correction: Sushi delivered by the right hand of God.

Is it perfect? Well, no, not by Nozawaian standards. The seaweed on the sushi doesn't dissolve in your mouth and the rice isn't barely warm, of course; instead, the grains have a tendency to stick to the cardboard. Edamame looks a little wan, as it often does shortly after steaming.

But! Who cares? The beans inside the edamame pods are meaty and well seasoned. The rice is so delicious that I keep stopping between paragraphs to pick up the remaining grains with my fingers. It's a stroke of genius to include a tiny container of finely sliced scallions rather than dumping them in the ponzu, where its acidity would quickly render them limp.

And most of all, the fish. The fish, the fish, the fish. We've all had take-out sushi and some are good, most are OK and too many are awful. However, I've never had take-out sushi that was sweet and fresh and didn't have any hint of fishiness, even when it had been prepared only 20 minutes before. Which makes sense: You're not going to save your best stuff for the take-out crowd, which isn't looking for a dining experience; they just want to eat, for crissake, and quickly.

And that's the Nozawa advantage. He's been a fish snob for so long that he can build an empire around it. Yes, Sushi Nozawa is better than Sugarfish, but when the mothership is that good, you've got room for error. And so it goes with takeout. I'm sure that takeout Sugarfish is not as good as in-house Sugarfish, but it is better than any other takeout sushi you've ever had (and more than a few sushi restaurants).

That said, until Nozawa starts delivery, I probably won't have his sushi at my desk again; Marina Del Rey is just too much of a schlep. But the next time I fly out of LAX, everyone on my aisle is going to be very jealous.

American Wine and Food Festival 2008: The dog ate my homework

2008-09-30T07:50:06-07:00

late. It used to be Palate.

This year, I swore, was going to be different. I would write in exhaustive detail about the American Wine and Food Festival. Not only because I'm covering it (as much as you can cover a food festival after the fact) (and because, really, What Kind Of Food Blogger Do You Think You Are If You Can't Get A Good Blog Post Out Of This), but also because every year I re-remember how much I love this event, more than (it must be said) all the other food and wine hoo-hahs put together.

Not that other food fests aren't wonderful (they are), but beyond the sheer, bludgeoning scale of the AWFF, and the extraordinary amount of care and expense chefs put into their presence each year, what makes me wax goofy is the giddy (goofy is the new giddy!) of the evening. You run into friends and chefs and chef friends and you remember seeing them from the year before and you exult at how good the Pinot was and marvel at the weather and being on the world's most impressive studio backlot and feel lucky and happy to be alive.

Really. And even before the stock market made the worst kind of history, that feeling is hard to find and should be preserved at every opportunity.

So, I took notes. Sort of. I did my best to collect a card or other remembrance from every booth and stand I sampled. I already know I didn't succeed; worse, my dog literally ate some of my handiwork. (In addition to consuming half of the Palate Food + Wine business card, above, I am presuming he also ingested the napkin I snagged from Jasper White's Summer Shack. God only knows what else he got.)

Anyway, here we go:

Jasper White's Summer Shack. Fried clam bellies and a lobster roll were delicious, but the homemade pickled beets and the horseradish-spiked coleslaw were full-on knockouts.

Tea Forte. You'd think they're all about presentation -- the "unique handmade pyramid silken infusers" (sheesh), the business-card-as-flipbook -- but I'd be happy to buy their teas in unmarked baggies. The white ginger-pear iced tea leaves behind a delicious taste.

Malbec. A tasting of four Malbecs from VineConnections.com. All Argentina, all impressive.

Tantara. Pinot Noir winery from Santa Maria. Tasted a flight of them and the Lindsey's Vineyard was a knockout -- we'd leave, try others (including a really feh Pinot from the makers of Caymus) and come back to Tantara for more.

The Modern. Beautiful cauliflower custard topped with shiny black caviar. I love that combination, but have to say it ~~tasted better than it looked~~ looked better than it tasted; there was a bitter undertaste I didn't understand or like.

And now I'm getting concerned for Hambone's digestion because I know I had a thicker pile of cards than that. The rest will have to be from memory:

Corn vichyssoise with crab from Fearing's in Dallas. The amazing Kalin wines -- 1994 Pinot and Chardonnay. Bonny Doon's Albarino. (I feel for Bonny Doon -- they're still trying to reestablish the brand as a boutique now that they've turned all the lesser labels over to Trader Joe's. But TJ's is so ubiquitous that it's a bit of a deal with the devil.) An extraordinary hamachi ceviche on top of chilled lemongrass cream. A terrific selection of Austrian wines, including a dry Riesling that I want more of. (Can't remember the name, but Dan Fredman will; he repped them.)

And now if you'll excuse me, I may have to take my dog to the vet.

So last night I went to a scotch and cheese tasting.

2008-09-19T09:09:29-07:00

Even typing that feels weird, as if "scotch and cheese" needs a sound effect along the lines of YEEESH! But it doesn't, mainly because there is a logic -- 40-proof single malts, with their high alcohol content and flavor hints of this, that and the other (apple, pear, caramel, et. al.) make a kind of sense with high-fat, high-end cheeses that have their own elaborate flavor profiles. (Ever had the Hook's double cream Blue Paradise? Good. God. Between that and Rogue Creamery's Smokey Blue, I must officially retire my position as secretary of the No, Really, I Don't Like Blue Cheese And It Looks Like Bread Mold, Anyway Society.)

So Barrie Lynn "Cheese Impresario" Kirch worked with Glenfiddich rep Ray Pearson (drinking scotch + wearing a kilt = HIS JOB) to pair five cheeses with single malts of various ages (12-30 years). And they stood at the front of a Beverly Hills Hotel ballroom to guide about 50 people through the tasting. Scotch and cheese may be the new Pinkberry for all I know; the event was hosted through Ian Blackburn's Learn About Wine and it was oversold.

The upshot? Very nice cheese. Nice scotch, probably better than my single-malt palate deserves. I now know how to say "Glenfiddich" (it's glen-FID-ick) and how many drops of water it needs for the flavor to bloom, which may earn me all kinds of sideways glances should I order it in a bar. But that is unlikely (though not impossible), since I still like wine a lot better and, honestly, was struggling to navigate the differences between the single malts. Not that they weren't there, but the gradations were subtle.

Similarly, I could also make sense of the cheese-scotch pairings (peaty scotch goes nicely with smokey blue cheese), but the combination was unusual enough to require some fierce attention and after a while either that or the scotch made my head start to hurt. And I sure don't envy Barrie Lynn her event homework, which at one point apparently meant tasting scotch at 10 am.

Something else to consider: scotch and cheese isn't far removed from scotch milk punch, a cocktail apparently invented for those who don't want to choose between tending their ulcers or their dipsomania. That said, I trust that a bite of Hook's cheddar followed by a sip of 18-year-old Glen-FID-ick would be a far superior experience.

Swiss restaurant to serve meals cooked with human breast milk

2008-09-18T13:07:08-07:00

It's an aggregation festival around here today, but some things can't be ignored. From London's Telegraph:

The owner of the Storchen restaurant in the exclusive Winterthur resort will improve his menu with local specialities such as meat stew and various soups and sauces containing at least 75 percent of mother's milk.

"We have all been raised on it. Why should we not include it into our diet?" Hans Locher, who has become Switzerland's most controversial restaurant owner, said.

Mr Locher attracted the attention of the leading media of the German-speaking world this week after he posted ads looking for women donors, who will receive just over three pounds for 14 ounces of their milk.

He said: "I first experimented with breast milk when my daughter was born.

"One can cook really delicious things with it. However, it always needs to be mixed with a bit of whipped cream, in order to keep the consistency." [emphasis mine]

The food control authority in Switzerland was initially confused by the apparent loophole in local legislation regulating the use of human milk and it was not clear whether Mr Locher could actually be banned from serving his specialities.

"Humans as producers of milk are simply not envisaged in the legislation.

"They are not on the list of approved species such as cows and sheep, but they are also not on the list of the banned species such as apes and primates," Rolf Etter of the Zurich food control laboratory said.

The economy's silver lining wraps a slice of processed cheese

2008-09-18T12:14:34-07:00

See? The current economic collapse isn't bad for everyone. With AIG now nationalized, it can no longer hold its slot on the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Stepping in: Kraft Foods, which will become the only food company in the 122-year-old stock index.

Again with the speedballs?

2008-09-18T11:17:44-07:00

So I'm trolling through the feeds (another blog project, one that has nothing to do w/ The Knife) and I come upon this AP story:

States ask MillerCoors to pull energy drink

MILWAUKEE (AP) -- Twenty-five states asked beverage maker MillerCoors LLC on Wednesday to abandon plans for a new caffeine-infused alcoholic energy drink.

Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said in a statement that the Sparks Red drink is a "recipe for disaster" because adding caffeine to alcoholic beverages reduces drinkers' sense of intoxication.

Blumenthal, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and the other attorneys general say young drinkers are especially vulnerable because of their limited judgment and risky behaviors in driving and other activities. They urged MillerCoors to abandon plans for the product and said they would consider other steps - hinting at a potential lawsuit - if necessary.

MillerCoors spokesman Julian Green said the company still plans to release the drink on Oct. 1. He said the federal Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, or TTB, has approved all formulas and labeling for Sparks.

You can read the whole thing here, but I'm like, Guys? Do you get out much? Not that you're wrong -- in fact, I know you're right, because there's something called Red Bull and vodka. I think it tastes like artificially sweetened liquid alumnium, but it just goes to show what I know because it's really, really popular. So much so that MillerCoors thought it might be nice to sell a pop-top drink based on it. And if you believe that's a "recipe for disaster," you might want to first go after the recipe for energy drinks.

Fancy, legal speedballs: What to expect at the LA Chocolate Salon

2008-09-17T14:07:13-07:00

Hi. I'm writing again. More about that later.

So, did you know that the LA Chocolate Salon is, like, three weeks away? Did you know there was such a thing as an LA Chocolate Salon? Me either! And I would have remained ignorant if it weren't for the fact that, for the last week or so, I have received another box or package every day bearing some new and heretofore unknown fancy-ass chocolate, along with a note that reads, "Hope to see you at the Los Angeles Chocolate Salon Oct. 5th!"

It's at the Pasadena City Center. There was one last year, too. And it's all about the aforementioned confections and, apparently, wine. Which is a little weird to me because wine and chocolate are often two great tastes that would rather not have anything to do with each other; in fact, would just as soon pretend the other doesn't exist. But then you consider the zippy effects of chocolate and the torpor induced by wine tasting and you realize the salon is actually an afternoon of fancy, legal speedballs, which should make the event very popular indeed.

Anyway. Here's some of the samples I've received so far.

Chocopod Passionfruit Caramels by Chuao Chocolate
Dark chocolate with an eccentric TANG! that mellows out to a buttery caramel.

Downey's Chocolate
Billed as "A Luxury Experience You Won't Want To Share." Either the tagline or the chocolate needs some work -- they're nice chocolates, but they don't induce my hoarding instincts. Also offers vegan options.

The Chocolate Traveler
It's a round, lidded tin filled with eight wedges of bittersweet chocolate. I like the idea of keeping this at my desk -- tidy, within reach but not too obvious -- but there is no way I am putting any container of chocolate in my purse unless it comes with a titanium lock. You just know that tin would burst open and promptly begin melting at the slightest provocation.

Firecracker by Chuao Chocolate
"Dark chocolate bar chipotle, salt and popping candy." Chocolate, Pop Rocks and an afterburn. You've been warned.

Confirmed: Julia Child was a spook

2008-08-13T18:20:46-07:00

Associated Press

I've always thought this was the case, but now there's the docs to prove it. Child served in a precursor to the CIA created during World War II by President Franklin Roosevelt:

The CIA had resisted releasing OSS records for decades. But former CIA Director William Casey, himself an OSS veteran, cleared the way for transfer of millions of OSS documents to the National Archives when he took over the agency in 1981. The personnel files are the latest to be made public.

The international spy ring also included Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg; Chicago White Sox catcher Moe Berg; historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr.; John Hemingway (son of Ernest); President Theodore Roosevelt's kids, Quentin and Kermit; Miles Copeland, dad of the Police drummer Stewart Copeland; actor Sterling Hayden and author Thomas Braden, who wrote the book that inspired the TV series "Eight is Enough."

Kanye West brings Santa Monica's Fatburger to Chicago

2008-08-13T14:19:14-07:00

Chicago Business

Kanye West's KW Foods (who knew?) has the rights to open 10 Fatburgers in the Chicago area. The first one, in suburban Orland Park, is a big 'un: more than 2,300 square feet and 74 seats. No firm opening date, but the rep says September. (Image: Bodog Beat)