ISSUE 29 • SPRING 2016
Building
Food
Communities The Tiny Mess A Big Taste of a Small Town No Cider House Rules E AT • D R I N K • R E A D • T H I N K
EdibleSantaBarbara.com SPRING 2016 | 1
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SANTA BAR BAR A
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JEFFRE Y BLOOM
COLIN QUIRT
spring page 20
page 26
Departments 26 A Big Taste of a Small Town Edible Santa Barbara in
6 Food for Thought by Krista Harris
Los Alamos by Krista Harris
8 Small Bites A Tribute to the Past Farm to Vase
68 Event Calendar
Camera to Plate Vertical Tasting: Empanadas
80 The Last Bite Spring’s Don’t-Miss Dish by Liz Dodder
11 In Season
12 Seasonal Recipes Then and Now by Krista Harris
14 Edible Excerpt Food with Friends by Leela Cyd
20 Drinkable Landscape Spring’s Cherry-Picked Pour by George Yatchisin
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COLIN QUIRT
22 Edible Garden Straw Bale Gardening by Joan S. Bolton
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Features page 67
32 The Tiny Mess by Brina Carey
40 If You Happen to See a Farmer
by Janice Cook Knight
46 No Cider House Rules by Wendy Thies Sell
52 Sous-Vide for the People
Recipes in This Issue Salads 60 Asparagus Trio Salad with Arugula and Basil 14 Blooming Flower Salads 60 Cherry, Pea and Fava Bean Salad
by Rosminah Brown
Vegetables and Side Dishes
58 The Spring Farmers Market
66 Carrot-Top Pesto 38 Rainbow Carrots with Beet Yogurt ad Herb Oil 13 Roasted Asparagus on Toast
by Pascale Beale 64 One Feast Fits All
by Anna Thomas
Main Dishes 66 Lemon Risotto with Sautéed Fresh Fava Beans 61 Roasted Cornish Game Hens with Apricots 67 Prawns Sautéed with Garlic 38 Springtime Fava Bean Cakes
Beverages and Desserts 62 Apricot and Frangipane Tart 21 Ch-Ch-Changes Cocktail 16 Rhubarb Rose Floats ABOUT THE COVER
Delicious food from a tiny kitchen. Photo by Trevor Gordon.
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VIC TORIA PE ARSON
spring
Bacara Resort & Spa presents
3rd Annual Santa Barbara
FOOD&WINE Weekend
Benefiting The Julia Child Foundation for Gastronomy and the Culinary Arts
SAVORING THE PAST, CULTIVATING THE FUTURE Join the celebration of Santa Barbara County’s best chefs, artisans, winemakers and farmers. Now in its third year, the Santa Barbara Food & Wine Weekend showcases the distinct tastes, sights and sounds of the region while also bringing cutting-edge culinary talent from across the country to Santa Barbara. Featured Guests include: Chef Richard Blais, Zoe Nathan & Josh Loeb from the Rustic Canyon Family of Restaurants, Julia Moskin & Kim Severson from The New York Times Cooking section and Paleo Author & Blogger Danielle Walker. Learn more at www.BacaraCulinaryWeekend.com April 15 -17, 2016 Bacara Resort & Spa, Santa Barbara, CA EdibleSantaBarbara.com SPRING 2016 | 5
FOOD FOR THOUGHT Building Food Communities Builds Communities
DAVID FOLKS
If there was a lesson to be learned at our Edible Santa Barbara in Los Alamos event in February it would be that we don’t need a lesson at all in how to build a community. We just need to eat and drink in our communities. And especially we need to support those food and beverage artisans who follow their passion to bring handcrafted and local food to our communities. You’ll read more about the Los Alamos event in this issue and what you’ll also read quite a bit about in this issue is this idea of building communities. It may not be spelled out in every article, but I see a theme emerging in these pages: Gathering with friends, sharing food and cooking, whether in tiny kitchens or with big feasts—these are the core elements of society. And they are so delightful to read about. Just like kitchens may be small or large, communities come in all sizes. Santa Barbara County doesn’t have any huge cities, but it still seems that people are interested in defining smaller neighborhoods within the cities we have. Within these neighborhoods and small towns food brings us together. Eating out and getting to know where our food comes from strengthens the bonds that connect us. This spring I’m looking forward to gathering friends and family around the table. I can’t wait to try more recipes from Leela Cyd’s new book Food with Friends, and to create a feast like the ones in Vegan Vegetarian Omnivore: Dinner for Everyone at the Table by Anna Thomas. This spring you might find me shopping at the farmers market with Pascale Beale and picking out apricots for her Apricot and Frangipane Tart, from her new book Les Fruits: Savory and Sweet Recipes from the Market Table. On my spring dinner party table you’ll find bottles of hard cider in amongst the wine and beer because apples aren’t just for fall anymore. And wine and cider hybrids are a new thing that I can’t wait to share with friends. I feel fortunate to be surrounded by so many talented people in the food and wine industry here in Santa Barbara County. Each spring is a time of renewal— in our communities, in our kitchens, at the market and at the table. This issue celebrates those rites of spring. Enjoy!
edible
SANTA BAR BAR A Member of Edible Communities
Edible Communities James Beard Foundation Publication of the Year (2011)
PUBLISHERS
Steven Brown & Krista Harris EDITOR
Krista Harris RECIPE EDITOR
Nancy Oster COPY EDITOR & PROOFING
Doug Adrianson DESIGNER
Steven Brown SOCIAL MEDIA
Jill Johnson
Contributors Pascale Beale Jeffrey Bloom Joan S. Bolton Rosminah Brown Brina Carey Leela Cyd Trevor Gordon Janice Cook Knight Liz Dodder Victoria Pearson Colin Quirt Wendy Thies Sell Anna Thomas George Yatchisin
Contact Us info@ediblesantabarbara.com
Advertising Inquiries ads@ediblesantabarbara.com Edible Santa BarbaraÂŽ is published quarterly and distributed throughout Santa Barbara County. Subscription rate is $28 annually. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be used without written permission from the publisher. Publisher expressly disclaims all liability for any occurrence that may arise as a consequence of the use of any information or recipes. Every effort is made to avoid errors, misspellings and omissions. If, however, an error comes to your attention, please accept our sincere apologies and notify us. Thank you.
edible Santa Barbara Š 2016 Krista Harris, Editor and Co-Publisher
Visit our website EdibleSantaBarbara.com Follow us on Facebook and Pinterest at Edible Santa Barbara and Twitter and Instagram at EdibleSB.
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Small Bites Local Tastes
ROSMINAH BROWN
Treats for you and your friend this spring.
Farm to Vase Bloom Floral & Foliage — A Flower CSA
STE VEN BROWN
A pretty vase of flowers might be considered a luxury, but what a difference a few blooms can make to brighten a room or mood. They make everyone happy. One company in Carpinteria is bringing that happiness to homes and businesses through a subscription service.
Tribute to the Past Zaca Mesa Homage Collection
Over the years Zaca Mesa Winery and Vineyards has become exceedingly well known for their Rhone-style wines. Their Black Bear Block Syrah has a cult following and their ‘Z’ blends are extremely popular on restaurant wine lists and in home cellars. But back in the early days, they were growing all sorts of varietals and experimenting with all sorts of wine. In a tribute to that past, and perhaps to inspire and keep their winemakers creatively challenged, they have come up with an Homage Collection of wines sourced from varietals grown in other parts of Santa Barbara County. Their 2014 Pinot Noir is sourced from Bien Nacido Vineyard and their 2013 Cabernet Sauvignon is sourced from Happy Canyon. The Zaca Mesa Homage Collection is available at their tasting room at 6905 Foxen Canyon Road, Los Olivos. ZacaMesa.com
— Krista Harris
Bloom Floral & Foliage is run by Victoria Urquhart, a thirdgeneration Carpinteria native. Her family has been farming in the foothills since the late 1960s. The concept of Bloom is similar to a community-supported agriculture (CSA) harvest subscription program, but for cut flowers and foliage. She cultivates direct local relationships with farmers to provide her customers with weekly bouquets of long-lasting farmfresh flowers. Victoria sources directly from Carpinteria growers whose flowers are often not available locally, and she seeks out interesting new varieties as well as traditional flowers that we commonly request like garden roses and peonies. You can customize flowers and sizes, but the great thing about a CSA is getting to discover floral gems you might not have known about. How about a bouquet that includes waterlily dahlias, tender hellabores, silver soft lambs ears, edible thyme and ruffled geranium leaves that smell of lemon, ginger or chocolate? A subscription for a small bouquet of flowers starts at $140 for four weekly deliveries. Delivery is available from Carpinteria to Goleta. She also offers holiday packages, a la carte deliveries and add-ons of specialty local foods. Visit BloomFloralAndFoliage.com for more information or call 805 316-0287.
— Rosminah Brown 8 | EDIBLE SANTA BARBARA SPRING 2016
vertical
Camera to Plate Eat This, Shoot That— Photo and Food Tours
TASTING
Buena Onda Artisan Empanadas
ROSMINAH BROWN
There is no denying it: We love to eat and we love to take pictures of the food we eat. Eat This, Shoot That is a tour that combines tastes and pours of local delicacies and our insatiable desire to photograph them while being guided through some of the more picturesque and walkable corridors of Santa Barbara. They’ll also help you take better photographs. Your friends who watch your Instagram and Facebook feeds will appreciate it. Eat This, Shoot That offers two tours: The first is through the industrial district of the Funk Zone, stopping in to Mony’s Taqueria, the Lucky Penny and Riverbench Winery before ending up at Stearns Wharf for ceviche at the Santa Barbara Shellfish Company and wine atop the deck at the Deep Sea Tasting Room.
Empanadas may be Portuguese in origin but the idea and variations have spread like wildfire all over Latin America and beyond. These mini pies filled with savory fillings are a perfect appetizer, snack or meal. We are fortunate to have Argentinianstyle empanadas handcrafted by Buena Onda right here in Santa Barbara. What’s even better is that they use local and organic ingredients. You can order by the dozen or half dozen for pickup or delivery.
Carne Picada This is the classic Argentinian-style empanada. The filling has Hollister Ranch organic ground beef, olives and hard-boiled egg. It’s hearty enough to make a meal with a side salad. Try pairing with an equally hearty red wine.
Pollo
ROSMINAH BROWN
Filled with pulled organic Mary’s chicken, onions and peppers, this empanada has just a bit of spiciness and is perfect with their chimichurri sauce. If you need a side dish to go with it, you won’t go wrong with roasted asparagus. And try pairing with a dry hard cider or a mildly flavored kombucha.
The second tour is in the historical district around the Presidio, in the heart of downtown Santa Barbara. This area is known for its classic Spanish-style architecture and is also the city’s original Chinatown and Japantown. The focus of this tour is wine, with tastings provided at five local wineries and complementary food from C’est Cheese and Hoffman Brat Haus. Each guide is a professional photographer, providing photography tips depending on the experience levels of the guests and different types of cameras like a smartphone or a DSLR.
Quinoa We thought this was going to be the “healthy” one but actually it was the surprise standout. It’s filled with organic red quinoa, goat cheese and spinach. The flavors are perfectly balanced and it has an elegant quality. Serve at a cocktail party. Pair with an equally elegant local wine.
La Suiza Another vegetarian filling with organic Swiss chard, leeks, brie and sage, this one couldn’t be more creamy and delicious. The flavor is very wine friendly so pair with any wine, although it would be just as happy with some local craft beer.
Tours are held Thursday through Saturday and each tour takes about three hours. Prices range from $69 to $89. For more information, visit EatThisShootThat.com or call 805 364 0564.
We only had room for four here, but they also have two other flavors we’ll be craving this summer— Caprese (with mozzarella, tomato and basil) and Choclo (with white corn and caramelized onions). Call 805 679-3320 or order at BuenaOndaSB.com. Pick up is at 724 E. Haley St., Wed–Sat 4–7pm.
— Rosminah Brown
— Krista Harris EdibleSantaBarbara.com SPRING 2016 | 9
in
Season this spring Spring Produce
Year-Round Produce
Spring Seafood
Artichokes Apricots and apriums Asparagus Avocados Basil Blackberries Blueberries Broccoli rabe (rapini) Brussels sprouts Cabbage Cardoons Celery Chanterelle mushrooms Cherimoya Cherries Cilantro Collards Cucumber Dill Escarole Fava beans Fennel Garlic scapes Grapefruit Green garlic Kiwi Kumquats Limes Loquats Mulberries Mustard greens Nettles Onions, green bunching Papayas Pea greens Peas, shelling and snap Radishes Raspberries Rhubarb Strawberries Summer squash and blossoms Tangerines/Mandarins Tomatoes, hothouse Turnips
Almonds, almond butter
Mussels Ridgeback shrimp Rock fish Sardines Spot prawns White seabass
(harvested Aug/Sept)
Apples Arugula Beans, dried Beets Bok choy Broccoli Carrots Cauliflower Chard Dandelion Dates
(harvested Sept/Oct)
Garlic
(harvested May/June)
Herbs
Year-Round Seafood Abalone (farmed) Black cod Clams Oysters Rock crab Sanddabs Urchin
(Bay leaf, mint, oregano, parsley, rosemary, sage, thyme)
Edible flowers Kale Leeks Lemons Lettuce Mushrooms Onions, bulb
(harvested May/June)
Oranges Pistachios, pistachio oil (harvested Sept/Oct)
Potatoes Radish Raisins
(harvested Sept/Oct)
Shallots Spinach Sprouts Squash, winter
Other Year-Round Eggs Coffee (limited availability) Dairy
(Regional raw milk, artisanal goat- and cow-milk cheeses, butters, curds, yogurts and spreads)
Fresh flowers Honey Olives, olive oil Meat
(Beef, chicken, duck, goat, rabbit, pork)
Potted plants/herbs Preserves Wheat
(Wheat berries, wheat flour, bread, pasta and baked goods produced from wheat grown locally)
(harvested July/Oct)
Walnuts, walnut oil (harvested Sept/Oct)
Yams
(harvested Aug/Sept)
EdibleSantaBarbara.com SPRING 2016 | 11
asparagus Then and Now
R
ecipes and our tastes have certainly changed over the years. I collect old cookbooks, but I don’t often cook from them. The recipes are more of an interesting glimpse at what times were like, not necessarily what I want to make for dinner. For this issue’s Then and Now article, I found a recipe for asparagus that is in need of a little updating. This is from one of my treasured copies of the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook from 1941. It’s the one with the cheerful red gingham on the cover and the three-ring binding so that you can add recipes. As the introduction states “for even tho a cook book may be complete, there are always NEW ways to do things.”
ASPARAGUS THEN
by Krista Harris
From Better Homes and Garden Cookbook (Meredith Publishing Co., 1941)
Asparagus with Cheese Sauce 1 pound asparagus 1 cup medium white sauce Salt and pepper 1 cup grated American cheese 4 slices bacon, chopped 4 slices toast
Cook asparagus in boiling, salted water 10 minutes. Season white sauce; add cheese and stir until melted. Fry bacon crisp. Arrange drained asparagus on toast; pour over cheese sauce; sprinkle with bacon. Serves 4.
COLIN QUIRT
This recipe proves that people have been adding bacon to things to make them better for a long time. But you won’t find too many modern recipes calling for white sauce. The funny thing is that the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook doesn’t have a recipe for white sauce, let alone medium white sauce. I did find a recipe for Thin White Sauce for Cream Soup, but that was it. Maybe they figured everyone knew how to make white sauce. In the 1949 edition, they have a recipe for White Sauce for Vegetables, with variations for Thin, Medium and Thick. So, clearly there was a need to add that after World War II.
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The thing about using white sauce (which is butter, flour and milk) and American cheese (what is American cheese, exactly?) and bacon is that it covers up the flavor of the asparagus, which is a shame. When you see asparagus in the spring at the farmers market, you want to get some and take it home and cook it up immediately. A quick sauté or roasting in the oven rather than boiling it for 10 minutes is the way to go.
Freshly ground black pepper 4 slices toast Parmesan cheese, for garnish
Put a baking sheet in the oven and preheat oven to 450°.
COLIN QUIRT
Rinse the asparagus and dry completely. Snap the woody ends off and put them in the compost bin. In a large bowl, combine the asparagus with some olive oil, salt and pepper, toss to coat the asparagus with the olive oil and to evenly distribute the seasonings.
ASPARAGUS NOW Roasted Asparagus on Toast The first time I roasted asparagus, it was a revelation, and I can’t seem to tire of this method. Of course, like the recipe from the ’40s, maybe 75 years from now people will think it’s such a dated way to prepare it. In the meantime, let’s enjoy yet another variation of roasted asparagus. Makes 2– 4 servings 1 bunch asparagus, approximately ½ pound Olive oil 1 teaspoon kosher or flake sea salt
Hollandia_EdibleSB_2015.indd 1
When the oven is up to temperature, carefully put the asparagus mixture into the hot pan, spreading it out into 1 layer. It will sizzle. Roast in the oven until the asparagus is soft and the ends are slightly brown and crispy, approximately 10–20 minutes, depending on the thickness of the asparagus. Brush the toast with some olive oil (lemon infused is particularly good) and season the top with salt and pepper. Add the hot asparagus over the toast and sprinkle with grated or thin slices of Parmesan cheese. You could even add some crispy cooked pancetta or bacon, but please skip the American cheese and the white sauce. Krista Harris is the editor and co-publisher of Edible Santa Barbara. One her favorite things to do is to invent and reinvent recipes.
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EDIBLE EXCERPT
Food with Friends Words and photos by Leela Cyd
T
he best food you will ever cook is simple, yet somehow special. It should only involve basic techniques, ingredients at their peak of freshness and a touch of whimsy. Don’t wait to plan a dinner party of complicated, unfamiliar or fussy dishes; meals with friends can be a singular, delicious bite— like a tahini bun you’ve set in motion moments before (easy when you have a stocked pantry), a slice of blueberry mascarpone crostata (its rough edges are infinitely forgiving) or a salad mostly composed of flowers (everyone will gasp with glee). In our busy lives, where time is limited and digital connections take priority, preparing a small, delectable morsel and inviting a friend or two over to taste it (and linger) is a purposeful return to something tactile, sumptuous and real—plus it’s so much fun. When it comes to creating happy memories, I believe more is more. So let’s make these little moments happen, where we gather to celebrate the small stuff, the ups and downs, the ordinary and extraordinary, and set the table with our good china and thrift store glasses mismatching in imperfect harmony. And let’s do it on a bright spring morning, a midweek night, or a Sunday afternoon. There’s never a “perfect” time—so get started now with your joyful, tasty life! Reprinted from Food with Friends by Leela Cyd. Copyright © 2016 by Leela Cyd. Photographs by Leela Cyd. Published by Clarkson Potter/Publishers, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC.
Recipe
buying outside of your supermarket, make sure you ask an informed attendant about how the flowers are grown and treated. Try to eat these salads without smiling ear to ear—it’s an impossible feat! Makes 2 servings 2 tablespoons olive oil 2 tablespoons white wine vinegar 1 teaspoon honey 1 garlic clove, minced Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper 3 cups arugula, stems trimmed
RECIPES Blooming Flower Salads Did you know there’s a plethora of flowers you can eat, as well as enjoy in a bouquet? Once you know which are edible, you can easily add them to your culinary repertoire, seeking them out at farmers markets or growing a few yourself to toss into salads or scatter on top of a cake. The flowers called for in this fairy-tale salad are largely available at most farmers markets, nurseries or occasionally at fancy grocery stores (sold in containers labeled “edible flowers.”) But if you’re
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3 medium radishes, thinly sliced 1 medium carrot, peeled into ribbons 1 cup organic, untreated petals from the following flowers, in an assortment of colors: 1 rose, 3 chrysanthemums, 3 calendula flowers, 3 cosmos flowers, 6 nasturtium flowers.
In a large wooden bowl, whisk together the olive oil, vinegar, honey, garlic and salt and pepper to taste until well combined. Toss the arugula, radishes and carrot ribbons with the dressing in the bowl. Divide the salads between 2 plates. Scatter all the flower petals on top of the vegetable mixture and serve immediately.
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Rhubarb Rose Floats Let’s bring the ice cream float back into vogue! Who’s with me? All you need is some sticky sour/sweet rhubarb syrup, which is easy enough to make. Add good-quality vanilla ice cream and sparkling water, and you’ve got something pretty exceptional. But if you really want to go all the way (and, like me, you enjoy a culinary project), knock out the candied rose petals ahead of time when you have an hour to spare—they keep for about a week in a sealed container and make teatime far more interesting. I cannot help but sprinkle them atop any dessert in my midst, they’re so pretty! Makes 4 servings 3
⁄ 4 cup granulated sugar
3 cups roughly chopped rhubarb Pinch of salt 2 cups carbonated water 4 scoops vanilla ice cream 1 cup (or more) whipped cream Candied Rose Petals (recipe follows)
In a medium saucepan, combine 1 cup water, the granulated sugar, rhubarb and salt and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat until it’s just high enough to maintain a healthy simmer, and cook for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Place a fine-mesh sieve over a bowl and pour the rhubarb mixture through it, pressing the pulp against the sides of the strainer to squeeze as much syrup out as possible. Reserve the pulp for another use (as a jam-like spread) and pour the syrup into a small sealable jar. (There may be a little extra than what you need here, but keep it sealed and it will stay good in the fridge for up to 2 weeks; see Tip.) In each of 4 cocktail glasses or wine glasses, mix 2 tablespoons of the rhubarb syrup with ½ cup of carbonated water. Scoop the ice cream into each glass and top with a heaping ¼ cup whipped cream (or more if you like). Dot the top of the whipped cream with 5 candied rose petals and serve. TIP: Leftover rhubarb syrup is great on yogurt, other desserts, oatmeal and even as the sweet element in a salad dressing.
Candied Rose Petals Makes 1 ⁄ 2 cup 20 organic untreated rose petals 1 large pasteurized egg white, lightly beaten 1
⁄ 2 cup superfine sugar
Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Using a small brush, paint each rose petal with a thin layer of egg white, then dust with the superfine sugar. Carefully place the petals on the parchment and let harden at room temperature for at least 8 hours (any extras can be stored in a sealed container for up to a week). Leela Cyd has contributed photography to Edible Santa Barbara and is a longtime contributor to TheKitchn.com and shoots for Food & Wine, Sweet Paul, the New York Times, Kinfolk and more. Leela lives with her husband in Santa Barbara. For more on Leela’s travels and adventures, please visit LeelaCyd.com.
16 | EDIBLE SANTA BARBARA SPRING 2016
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18 | EDIBLE SANTA BARBARA SPRING 2016
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EdibleSantaBarbara.com SPRING 2016 | 19
DRINKABLE LANDSCAPE
Spring’s Cherry-Picked Pour by George Yatchisin PHOTOGRAPHY BY COLIN QUIRT
I
t’s tough to know what spring might bring. Will El Niño bawl his baby eyes to flood us? Will summer’s heat expand months ahead of schedule? This time of year we have to be prepared to drink almost anything for any occasion. That said, one of the best harbingers of the season is cherry week. I kid, sort of. For while cherries tend to hit the farmers market for about a month, it usually seems peak cherry—and by peak I mean flavor, not plentitude—tends to be about 10 days. But those 10 days are glorious, for what fruit so tiny packs such a pleasurable punch? Plus the vermillion hue of cherry juice is almost enough to make one turn vampire, at the least it makes one’s cocktail deeply desirable. Developing this cocktail, then, was a hunt to find the best way to highlight the cherry. Alas, too often they only end up at a bar as Maraschino cherries, mere luridly colored props to drop into your Manhattans and feel like you’ve become your parents. But a fresh cherry is a thing of beauty. (If you wondered, we tested for you: Thawed frozen fruit isn’t a terrible substitute —the flavor will be 87% of the way there, 20 | EDIBLE SANTA BARBARA SPRING 2016
it’s the mushier texture that will let you down. Since you’re mostly mashing them anyway here, it’s an OK substitute.) In the kitchen a chef knows cherries have an affinity for chocolate, and even other juices like OJ, so that’s the direction I took. Plus, come spring, all those oranges that weighed your tree’s boughs need to be used for something—so juice and mix. That expands the flavor base so you have sweet-tart and sweetsour, and learning there’s such a surprising tone poem along the possibly saccharine scale is one joy of a well-made drink. That gets us to the one part whimsical, three-parts honed with keen intent name of the drink, the Ch-Ch-Changes Cocktail. The whimsy is the nod to the sadly departed Bowie, of course, and a historical hint this is a classed-up, non-layered revision of the Tequila Sunrise, beloved by many a ’70s rock star. The stuttered Chs refer to the cherries and chocolate, of course. Plus even the word “change” is pretty much as close as you can get to rhyme with orange, so there’s that. If spring isn’t a time for rebirth and change, when is? It’s also fun to include two types of bitters, just in case Eliot is right and April is the cruelest month after all. There are numerous chocolate bitters available (what a bounteous world we live in, at last, especially with so many available in town at Still), but while you could go for a Oaxacan chocolate with some chili zip, I opted for one that for my palate is the cacao-est of the lot, made by Scrappy’s in Seattle. Jut a few dashes of the magic elixir will do the trick, making you feel less bad about spending so much on a tiny bottle.
Ch-Ch-Changes Cocktail Makes 2 cocktails 8 cherries 5 ounces tequila 2 ounces fresh orange juice 1 ounce Luxardo Maraschino liqueur 4 dashes chocolate bitters per glass 2 dashes cherry bark bitters per glass 2 tequila-soaked cherries, for garnish
Muddle the 8 cherries in a cocktail shaker even before you add anything else. (Yes, this is a bit odd, but it guarantees their incorporation into the drink.) Really pop each one and mash them about. Add the tequila, orange juice, Luxardo Maraschino, and muddle again to incorporate the cherry flavors with the rest of the drink. Add ice and shake the cocktail until chilled. Pour the drinks into 2 highball glasses filled with crushed ice (you might have an ice crusher in your freezer; some of us do it manually—it’s all OK). Add the 2 kinds of bitters to each drink. As for bitters and the difficult denomination of dashes—indeed, it’s hard to be sure if each little splash is the “official” weight of a dash. At this amount of liquid, don’t fret it, but estimate and then feel free to do what tastes best to you. Maybe you want a really chocolaty drink, then go for it. You add the bitters to each drink last as so much of the pleasure of bitters comes through your nose. Just wait until that chocolate hits you. Garnish each drink with one of the tequila-soaked cherries.
Tequila-Soaked Cherries Up to 2 days before you want to make these drinks, put as many cherries as you think you’ll make drinks (plus a bonus few to, uh, test) into a sealable container, and then fill with tequila to just cover. Keep in the refrigerator until use. Feel free to use the soaking tequila— even in this cocktail — after the cherries have been liberated.
The drink also offers two ways to add cherry complexity. Luxardo Maraschino liqueur has nothing much to do with the red-dyed wonders dismissed above, but is one of the few actually distilled liqueurs, made from sour Marasca cherries in Croatia. It’s very dry for a liqueur, and having it in your liquor cabinet means you can make the classic gin drink the Aviation, so you’re welcome. The other cherry enhancement is Bittercube Wild Cherry Bark bitters, which in addition to the cherry, brings vanilla and yet another mild chocolate note. Speaking of which, this drink might be a perfect accompaniment as you nibble the ears off an Easter basket bunny. Or perhaps we can hope Jessica Foster Confections makes a special Ch-Ch-Changes truffle for us? George Yatchisin happily eats, drinks and writes in Santa Barbara. He blogs at GeorgeEats.com.
EdibleSantaBarbara.com SPRING 2016 | 21
EDIBLE GARDEN
Straw Bale Gardening by Joan S. Bolton
O
rdinarily, raised beds filled with fertile, fresh-smelling soil are the gold standard for growing edibles. You can blend the soil to well-draining organic perfection, work in more organic material every time you put in a new crop, plant intensively and control weeds. Also, because the beds are raised, they’re easier to reach. But depending on your situation, raised beds may not be practical. Say your only sunny spot is a paved courtyard, you’re new to edibles and not ready to commit to the cost of building raised beds, or you’re renting and don’t want to invest in your landlord’s improvements. Instead, straw bales are an option. They’re inexpensive, temporary and—from my recent testing—provide a welcoming environment for seasonal edibles.
22 | EDIBLE SANTA BARBARA SPRING 2016
Getting Started Be sure to buy bales of straw, which should not harbor as many weed seeds as bales of alfalfa or hay. I bought two, measuring 43 inches long, 14 inches wide and 20 inches tall, for $30 from La Cumbre Feed in Santa Barbara. Set the bales so the baling twine is parallel to the ground and the stalks face up. The stalks are hollow and act like straws, “drinking” the irrigation into the interiors of the bales. I butted mine together to create a 28-inch-wide growing space. Next comes conditioning, a process that takes four to six weeks. You’ll saturate the straw, then add a balanced fertilizer to activate the decomposition of the carbon-rich stalks, which should create a pliable, nutrient-filled growing medium. It’s akin to setting up a mini compost system, with the fertilizer providing the nitrogen and the straw providing the carbon.
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Week One, I soaked my bales daily. I applied the water slowly to prevent it from skittering off the tops. The bales consumed an alarming amount of water—easily 15 to 20 gallons per soak. Week Two called for daily watering, along with a half cup of fertilizer, per bale, for the first three days, then a quarter cup the following three days. By Week Three, the bales were to heat up, indicating that decomposition had begun. Day One of Week Two (a Sunday), I applied two balanced fertilizers that I had on hand. Onto one bale went a 5-6-6 allpurpose organic plant food containing feather, bone, blood, kelp and alfalfa meal; sulfate of potash and 12 strains of mycorrhizae. Onto the other bale, I sprinkled a straightforward 10-12-10 rose food derived from polymer and sulfur-coated urea, ammonium sulfate, ammonium phosphate, muriate of potash, ferrous sulfate and ferric oxide. Monday, the granules were still intact, so I watered only. Tuesday, I applied a half-cup to each bale and watered. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday came and went with the granules still visible, so water only. Saturday, half a dozen grass-like blades sprouted and heralded the appearance of an earwig, narrow brown beetle, honeybee and greenish-black fly. But no heat. I applied one last half-cup to each bale, then opted to forgo further applications, fearing that the roots of tender new seedlings might burn, once they went in. Weeks Three through Five, I continued drenching the bales every few days, and continued to be concerned about how much water disappeared into them. Week Six, still no heat. But the interiors had begun to soften when I probed by hand, so I finally planted.
Planting Time Understand that you won’t be planting directly in the straw. Instead, you’ll create individual planting holes (I used clippers to carve out holes about 6 inches wide and 10 inches deep), then fill them with high-quality potting soil and compost. Keep those holes 24 | EDIBLE SANTA BARBARA SPRING 2016
toward the center. Too close to the edges and the sides of the bale may collapse. Likewise, sowing seeds is difficult as there’s not much surface area. Also, in my case, I wanted to test a variety of vegetables rather than sow a single crop. I chose smaller-scale plants, from four-inch pots. A Sweet Banana heirloom pepper, Ancho Gigantea pepper and Early Girl tomato went into one bale; a Kentucky Wonder bush bean, Japanese Millionaire heirloom eggplant and Green Zebra heirloom tomato into the other. I planted duplicates in a nearby raised bed for comparison. Both sets grew at about the same pace. However, the straw bale vegetables required more frequent water, and handwatering had to be reduced to a trickle. I had inserted each plant into a shallow depression, shaped extra potting soil to create mini-basins, then mulched the entire straw top with another inch of potting soil and fine compost. But if the hose water came out too fast, it overflowed the basins, sheeted off the mulch and cascaded onto the surrounding dirt. Once the seedlings’ leaves grew large enough to fully shade the bales, I was able to reduce the watering to match that of the veggies in the raised bed.
The Verdict For most gardeners, despite any hiccups along the way, the quality of the crop is the ultimate measure of success. By that bar, my straw bales delivered. The plants were just as tall and robust as those in the raised bed. Neither set suffered from pests or disease. More important, they yielded equally impressive harvests of tasty, succulent tomatoes, peppers, beans and eggplants. In the plus column, then, my straw bales produced terrific crops. At 20 inches tall, the bales were easier to maintain than my foot-tall raised beds. They didn’t cost much. And I could compost the remains. However, that extra water was troubling, especially since irrigation began six weeks before planting. In retrospect, I could have tried covering the bales with a tarp to conserve water during the conditioning phase, perhaps generating that elusive heat as well. Would I garden in straw bales again? It’s unlikely, given that, at four acres, we have an embarrassment of growing space. But if traditional raised beds weren’t practical, I would give straw bales serious thought, as I found that they are an effective alternative for producing home-grown, healthy edibles. Joan S. Bolton is a freelance writer, garden coach and garden designer who confesses to a lifelong love affair with plants. She and her husband, Tom, have filled their four-acre property in western Goleta with natives and other colorful, water-conserving plants. They also maintain avocado, citrus and fruit trees and grow vegetables and herbs year-round. SantaBarbaraGardens.com
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A Big Taste of a Small Town Edible Santa Barbara in LOS ALAMOS by Krista Harris PHOTOGRAPHY BY JEFFREY BLOOM
Looking down Bell Street in Los Alamos.
I
n February Edible Santa Barbara took to the streets in Los Alamos—visiting, tasting and touring this small town and the surrounding area. The idea was to dig deeper into what makes Los Alamos a culinary destination: the people, the businesses and the overall creative vibe. Participants had their choice of sessions throughout the day. In the morning there was a Food Photography Workshop with Edible Communities co-founder Carole Topalian; and a Recipe Development Workshop with Edible Communties co-founder Tracey Ryder and cookbook author Pascale Beale. There was also a panel discussion on Building a Food Community with Jamie Gluck of Bell Street Farm, Clark Staub of Full of Life Flatbread, Sonja Magdevski of Casa Dumetz and Babi’s Beer Emporium 26 | EDIBLE SANTA BARBARA SPRING 2016
and Bob Oswaks of Bob’s Well Bread, moderated by Edible Boston publisher Ilene Bezahler and Edible Santa Barbara publisher Krista Harris. Next up was a Meet Your Farmer panel discussion with farmers Larry Kandarian, Chad Valla, Erica Reinheimer and Courtney Mellblom, moderated by Krista Harris; a Pinot Noir Tasting at Presqu’ile Winery with sommelier Cameron Porter and winemaker Dieter Cronje; and a Biodynamic Seminar and Tasting at Martian Ranch and Vineyard with proprietor Nan Helgeland. Lunch was held at Full of Life Flatbread, which in itself was a rarity since the restaurant isn’t normally open for lunch. Guest speaker Steve Sando of Rancho Gordo Beans regaled the
A panel discussion on Building a Food Community.
A Recipe Development Workshop with Edible Communties co-founder Tracey Ryder and cookbook author Pascale Beale (above).
STE VEN BROWN
Meanwhile, at Bell Street Farm Jamie Gluck and his team shared stories and offered a porchetta demonstration and a wine tasting with Chrystal Clifton of Palmina Wines. The final sessions of the day were a baking seminar at Bob’s Well Bread where participants went right into the kitchen to see every step of how the bread is made. And over at Casa Dumetz Sonja Magdevski led a panel discussion of Santa Barbara County Wine Pioneers with some of the most influential local winemakers: Richard Sanford of Alma Rosa; Bob Lindquist of Qupé; Billy Wathen of Foxen; Rick Longoria of Longoria Wines; and Fred Brander of Brander. It is rare to gather a group of winemakers like this. Dinner was held down the street at The Station and Clark Staub once again came up with a spectacular menu including
Biodynamic Seminar and Tasting at Martain Ranch and Vineyard.
audience with his stories while the menu created by Clark Staub featured Steve Sando’s heirloom beans and heirloom grains from farmer Larry Kandarian. Clark also created a unique beverage made from beet juice and Bragg’s apple cider vinegar. After lunch Sonja Magdevski moderated a panel discussion on Santa Barbara County’s Place in the Ever Changing Craft Beer World. The discussion and tasting featured Brian Thompson of Telegraph Brewing Company; Josh Ellis of M Special Brewing Company; Jim Crooks of Firestone Walker Barrelworks; Patrick Gibson and Justin Crider of Figueroa Mountain Brewing; and Kris Parker from Third Window Brewing Company. The tasting also included a chocolate confection by Chocolate Maya made with Telegraph Rhinoceros Ale.
A Food Photography Workshop with Edible Communities co-founder Carole Topalian.
EdibleSantaBarbara.com SPRING 2016 | 27
Left to right: Chefs Clark Staub and David Jeffers (above) prepare Lunch at Full of Life Flatbread with guest speaker Steve Sando of Rancho Gordo Beans.
Baking seminar at Bob’s Well Bread where participants went right into the kitchen to see every step of how the bread is made.
Bell Street Farm hosted a porchetta demonstration and a wine tasting with Palmina Wines.
Sonja Magdevski moderated a panel discussion on Santa Barbara County’s Place in the Ever Changing Craft Beer World.
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Top: Sonja Magdevski led a panel discussion of Santa Barbara County Wine Pioneers with some of the most influential local winemakers. Bottom left: Clark Staub at The Station preparing the first course for the multi-course dinner by the fire. Bottom right: At the dinner, Edible Communities founders Tracey Ryder and Carole Topalian and Edible Santa Barbara owners and publishers Krista Harris and Steve Brown presented the inaugural Sanford Award for Sustainable Stewardship to Richard and Thekla Sanford.
appetizers by guest chefs of Los Alamos from Bell Street Farm, Pico at The Los Alamos General Store, Plenty on Bell and Bob’s Well Bread. The meal was paired with wine by Qupé, Casa Dumetz and Municipal Winemakers. The menu included a bacon-wrapped Niman Ranch pork loin and an incredible finish with gluten-free butter cakes with warmed San Marcos Farms avocado honey, avocado ice cream and kefir lime salt paired with Casa Dumetz Late Harvest Viognier. At the dinner, Edible Communities founders Tracey Ryder and Carole Topalian and Edible Santa Barbara owners and publishers Krista Harris and Steve Brown presented the inaugural Sanford Award for Sustainable Stewardship to Richard and Thekla Sanford for their 30 | EDIBLE SANTA BARBARA SPRING 2016
pioneering efforts. To enable them to continue their influence, they’ll choose and present the award to others in the future. This event came together with the help of many people, and it celebrated the core values that Edible Santa Barbara promotes and that our readers appreciate: local food, community, sustainability, culture and the people and stories of Santa Barbara County. It’s hard to image a day more packed with great food, wine, beer and fascinating people. It was that elusive combination of education and stimulus that made it so much fun and a day not to be forgotten. Krista Harris is the editor and co-publisher of Edible Santa Barbara.
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The Tiny Mess
Finding Inspiration in Small Spaces by Brina Carey PHOTOGRAPHY BY TREVOR GORDON
Mary Gonzalez (left) and Maddie Gordon (right) in Mary’s rustic ranch kitchen.
32 | EDIBLE SANTA BARBARA SPRING 2016
T
here’s something intriguing about a small kitchen. The romantic allure of simplicity. A space that holds precisely what you need. A place where everything is within arm’s reach. Where your focus is purely on flavors and the task at hand. Could you sacrifice square footage for a simpler existence, say, in a tiny kitchen? Maddie Gordon and Mary Gonzalez did. Their unique spaces gave them inspiration not just to cook, but to write a book too. It’s called The Tiny Mess.
Mary works efficiently in her tiny kitchen.
Maddie and Mary
Mary’s Rustic Ranch Kitchen
I arrive at Mary’s home in Carpinteria to find the two friends busily preparing baked goods and foraging for peppercorns and chickweed to top pizzas. They tell me they met through a mutual friend and immediately bonded over their eclectic palates and passion for food. The two have since collaborated on many recipes, which they test in their tiny kitchens.
Across town, Mary has a similarly simple approach to tiny living. “I love my life,” she says of her hilltop trailer. A local girl, she was born and raised on an avocado ranch atop Rincon Mountain— no doubt contributing to her pursuit of a career in food. Mary focused on baking at Santa Barbara City College’s culinary arts program before moving to LA to work at a vegan, organic and gluten- and soy-free bakery. She eventually returned to Carpinteria to work on her parents’ ranch. “I fell in love with gardening,” she says. At that time she also baked at the Sojourner Café and started a farm-to-table meal delivery service. These days, Mary lives and works at a ranch on Highway 150. Her modest trailer is off the grid and set among avocado and lemon trees. She also works at the farmers market and is a plant-based baker. Her way of life is modest, and that’s just the way she likes it. “Working with plants has changed my perception of food and cooking,” says Mary. Her baked goods are inspired by the natural world and often have a strong floral component. “I love combining rose geranium with chocolate, or chocolate with lavender.” While her flavors are elevated, Mary’s kitchen is rudimentary. She splits her space between the trailer and a quaint windowed outdoor kitchen just a few steps away. This solar-powered kitchen gives Mary space for “luxuries” like a blender and food processor. She also has an old O’Keefe & Merritt stove and one large sink. While it has more amenities, the outdoor kitchen is colder and farther from her pantry so she mostly uses it when she
Maddie’s Floating Galley Maddie is a native of Sussex, England, who moved to Santa Barbara five years ago. She now shares a 36-foot sailboat with her husband. “It took a while to adapt to our tiny floating kitchen,” she says, “but we’ve always lived in small studios or in our camper so I knew how to do it—just not full time.” Maddie is a creative spirit. So, naturally, the boat has become a creative space for her work as a freelance illustrator and textile artist as well as for her cooking. “I love cooking because when I’m not feeling inspired to draw or sew, I know that I can unleash that creativity in the kitchen,” she says. The boat’s galley has a small fridge, a two-burner stove and an oven. There’s no freezer, so fresh food must be at the center of the meal. A lack of fridge space has forced her to get even more creative. “We make sauerkraut and other lacto-fermented veggies that don’t need refrigeration, we sprout grains and seeds, make yogurt and harvest our own seaweed.” They also vacuum seal or can the extra fish they catch at sea. Though her ingredients may seem eclectic, Maddie keeps her cooking simple by focusing on a handful of ingredients. “I don’t over-complicate things; I just don’t have the space for it.”
EdibleSantaBarbara.com SPRING 2016 | 33
Maddie and Mary work together to create a feast.
34 | EDIBLE SANTA BARBARA SPRING 2016
Rainbow carrots with beet yogurt and herb oil.
EdibleSantaBarbara.com SPRING 2016 | 35
Friends gather together to enjoy an al fresco meal.
has company. Most of the time she cooks in the very basic kitchen in her trailer. While her trailer lacks some comforts, it’s not short on charm. There is a four-burner stove and a small oven, however, no electricity or running water. Mary was using a headlamp indoors to see at night, but recently got a trailer light. She uses her refrigerator for dry storage and keeps food cold in an ice chest on the floor. An irrigation line runs through her window and over her sink so she can wash dishes. “I’ve become more appreciative of refrigeration and electricity,” she says. Like Maddie, Mary ferments and cans and focuses her meals on fresh herbs and seasonal produce. She usually makes onebowl meals with a variety of textures and toppings. “My tiny kitchen keeps me making easy meals that don’t take up too much space,” says Mary.
The Tiny Mess After spending time with them, it became clear that Maddie and Mary have very similar ideals when it comes to living. They’ve spent many hours cooking together and discussing ideas for culinary projects so it came as no surprise to me that they wanted to write a book about tiny kitchens. 36 | EDIBLE SANTA BARBARA SPRING 2016
“We have a lot of friends in wild, alternative spaces. Some live in trucks, boats, trailers, tree houses, cabins, yurts and other tiny spaces,” says Maddie. “This brought us to the idea of sharing other peoples’ sweet little kitchens,” Mary adds. The Tiny Mess book will include photo essays, interviews and recipes from select tiny kitchens. The photos are all medium format with the exception of a handful of 35mm photographs. “It really is a handcrafted project,” says Maddie. Maddie and Mary write the recipes and Maddie’s husband, photographer and professional surfer Trevor Gordon, shoots them. They have been looking for kitchens that are miniature and interesting and inhabited by creative people. Mary has been scouting locally and last year Trevor and Maddie toured homes in the Pacific Northwest. “We visited a lot of off-the-grid places,” recalls Maddie. “It’s so fun to see how people adapt to their wild situations.” Trevor and Maddie found themselves in unconventional homes including a tree house, a converted school bus and a diminutive cabin. Some of their subjects lived off the land. One couple lived on Orcas Island in Washington. They cultivated their own grains, hunted deer and rabbit, harvested their own honey, foraged greens and kelp and preserved nearly everything.
“I was so inspired after that trip,” says Maddie. “I learned to be more frugal. I make do with what we have now and forage where I can. I dehydrate, ferment and can a lot of our goods, which is a direct result of meeting those amazing people.” As housing prices increase, there is a movement toward smaller homes—studios, campers, cabins and even boats. “Tiny living is a lifestyle choice not just a home choice. It means scaling down where you live and how you live,” Maddie says. Maddie and Mary hope the book will inspire others too— those with kitchens both large and small. “People love to learn about simple living. Anyone can do it but people don’t think that it’s possible or fun,” says Maddie.
A Trip to Italy , without the Jet Lag…
Embrace Your Space With a few tricks and thoughtful planning Mary and Maddie have learned to create complex flavors in their simple spaces. Here are a few tips to turn your small space into an inspired one. Maximize your counter space. If your counters are cluttered you won’t want to use them. Find alternative spaces for rarely used items, or discard them. Hang things you reach for often or store them on open shelving. Create additional counter space by using a sink cover. Invest in multi-functional items. Use Mason jars for bulk goods, leftovers, glassware, or for canning and fermentation. Buy a pot lid that doubles as a strainer or a set of nesting bowls that serve as a mixing, food prep and measuring set. A small immersion blender can replace a blender and a bulky food processor. Keep only the items you love. If you cook one-pot meals, use a great pot. Invest in a cast-iron skillet or Dutch oven. Besides being a workhorse, cast iron is easy to clean. You can also eliminate the need for many dull knives with one great chef ’s knife and one serrated knife. Get organized. Get used to the art of mise en place, and you’ll keep a tidier kitchen. To save space and minimize dishes use a muffin tin to hold your prepped ingredients or layer them in a single bowl and separate them with wax paper. Clean as you go to keep the counters and sink clear. And do your dishes immediately, so they don’t pile up. Be frugal with resources. Steam vegetables instead of roasting them to save energy, and use quick-cooking grains such as bulgur and quinoa. Switch to a pressure cooker, which requires less water and fuel. If you feel your small kitchen is leaving something to be desired, use it as an opportunity to simplify. Having less can ultimately be more fulfilling. “I love that when we have friends over we all squeeze in and sit close to each other,” Maddie says. “I bring a meal over and it sits in front of us all on the tiny table, steaming. It feels so personal.” Maybe it’s time to redefine the dream kitchen. Maybe dreaming big actually means living small. (Recipes on Page 38)
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Measure into 1 ⁄ 3 -cup balls and flatten with your palms into patties. Carefully coat each cake in the pepita and flax seed mixture and place on wax paper on a plate. Continue this until all of the mixture is used and patties are layered between sheets of waxed paper. Note: If they are crumbly and not holding their shape, try chilling them or form them right before cooking and place them directly into the pan. In a large well-seasoned skillet or nonstick pan, heat coconut oil almost to the smoking point. Add the cakes, being careful not to overcrowd the pan. Lower heat to medium and fry for 2 minutes on each side or until crispy and golden. When all patties are fried, bake in preheated oven for 5 minutes and serve.
Rainbow Carrots with Beet Yogurt and Herb Oil Makes 4 servings 20 rainbow carrots, washed with tops cut short 3 tablespoons of olive oil plus ½ cup 11 ⁄ 2 teaspoons sea salt
RECIPES Springtime Fava Bean Cakes These fresh and hearty patties showcase the best of spring produce and flavors. They can be served as-is or topped with homemade pesto, aioli or in a crusty ciabatta roll as a wonderful vegan burger. Makes 4–6 servings. 1 cup crushed pepitas 1
⁄ 4 cup flax seed meal
1 pinch salt 2 cups shelled fava beans or edamame, fresh or frozen and defrosted 1
⁄ 3 cup chopped green onion
2 cloves minced garlic 11 ⁄ 2 cups cooked quinoa 21 ⁄ 2 tablespoons arrowroot powered 1
⁄ 3 cup cornmeal
2 tablespoons fresh parsley 1
⁄ 4 cup fresh chopped mint
2 tablespoons lemon juice
⁄ 4 teaspoon sea salt plus more to taste and for the pepita crust 3
1
⁄ 2 teaspoon black pepper
2 tablespoons coconut oil for frying
Combine crushed pepitas, flax seed meal and pinch of salt in a bowl and put aside. Add remaining ingredients to a food processor and pulse until just combined. Empty into a large bowl and, using your hands, combine and meld the mixture well, making sure to break up the quinoa and beans. 38 | EDIBLE SANTA BARBARA SPRING 2016
⁄ 2 cup of plain, unsweetened yogurt or nondairy organic soy yogurt 1
1 beet, peeled and grated 1
⁄ 3 cup fresh dill
1
⁄ 3 cup fresh parsley
1
⁄ 3 cup fresh mint
Preheat oven to 350°. In a large roasting pan lay the carrots out and drizzle with 3 tablespoons of olive oil and sprinkle with sea salt. Massage with your hands to ensure carrots are well coated. Bake for approximately 40 minutes, or until a carrot will fall off a fork easily when pierced. While the carrots are cooking, take the grated beets and squeeze through cheesecloth or push through a fine sieve to separate the juice from the flesh. Keep the juice and discard the flesh. In a medium bowl, combine 2 teaspoons of beet juice and yogurt. Add more beet juice for a more intense color. Cover and set aside. In a blender add the remaining ½ cup of olive oil and fresh herbs. Blend until herbs are well broken down and oil is bright green. Pour thorough a fine sieve over a bowl, keeping the oil and discarding the herbs. Arrange the roasted carrots on a platter and drizzle artistically with the yogurt and the herb oil.
Resources The Tiny Mess will be available by December 2016 and they will soon be launching a Kickstarter campaign for pre-orders. To learn more about The Tiny Mess visit TheTinyMess.com, follow @the_tiny_mess on Instagram or tag images of your own tiny kitchen using #thetinymess. Brina Carey has spent her career working in and for the environment. Now you can find her cooking vegan treats for her toddler and teaching him bird identification while fantasizing about her dream kitchen and veggie garden.
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If You Happen to See a Farmer… The History of the Santa Barbara Farmers Market by Janice Cook Knight PHOTOGRAPHY BY COLIN QUIRT
A
TIM BUTCHER
ny Saturday, rain or shine, I can walk down the aisles of During the summer of 1977, a glut of peaches on the market made prices so low that farmers couldn’t sell them, let alone our Santa Barbara Farmers Market and choose produce make a profit. With no other market for their fruit, some farmers items that are fresh, ripe and mostly local. I’ve lived protested by dumping their extra fruit on the State Capitol’s here since 1986, and for me the market has been a fixture. If lawn. This helped prompt Governor Brown to sign an executive I can’t make Saturday’s downtown market, there is Tuesday order creating the Certified afternoon on State Farmers Market Program. Street, or on other days I can go to Montecito, And prior to that, Carpinteria, Goleta during the ’60s and or Solvang. There are ’70s a back-to-the-land also farmers markets in movement was sweeping Vandenberg Village and the country, as Americans Santa Maria. were becoming aware of the dangers of pesticides It’s hard to imagine in the environment. Santa a time when there Barbara experienced a tragic wasn’t a farmers market, and world-renowned oil but our modern farmers spill in 1969. The following market is only 37 years year, the Community old. Before that, the last Environmental Council farmers market in Santa formed. One of its many Barbara had been held projects in Santa Barbara in 1943, when several was the creation of local farmers banded community gardens. together to sell their The garden called El produce to the public. Mirasol, a demonstration But after World War II, An early farmers market held at the Santa Barbara Mission in 1979. and community garden with industrial agriculture became the norm and government agencies and regulations a small produce stand, was located on four acres at what is now sprang up to encourage large-scale farming and food production. known as Alice Keck Park Memorial Gardens. Several future Huge supermarkets brought together packaged products from farmers had links to El Mirasol: John Evarts and Margie Popper everywhere. All these factors combined to drive the small farmer lived and worked there, as did Chris Thompson. Carol Ostroff out of business. gardened there. Warren Pierce (who later became a student of the iconoclastic British gardener Alan Chadwick) taught organic What jump-started farmers markets again? and French intensive gardening classes at El Mirasol and became Governor Jerry Brown, during his first tenure as our the mentor to many, including Randy Wade, who is largely governor in the 1970s, is acknowledged for helping to create credited with spearheading the farmers market movement in a change in the way produce could be sold. It’s hard to believe Santa Barbara. The presence of many idealistic young farmers now, but at that time California’s rules on sorting, packing, and gardeners who were willing to work hard, the times they transporting and selling produce made it against the law for were living in, and the support of organizations such as the CEC farmers to sell produce directly to consumers. Opposite: a basket of produce at the Roots Farm booth at the Saturday Santa Barbara Farmers Market.
EdibleSantaBarbara.com SPRING 2016 | 41
Randy Wade is largely credited with spearheading the farmers market movement in Santa Barbara.
made the farmers market an idea whose time had come. Our Santa Barbara Farmers Market started with a lot of fanfare at the Santa Barbara Mission on March 24, 1979. Ours was among the first 20 farmers markets in the state. An estimated 3,000 people turned out over the course of the day to buy vegetables, herbs, plants and fruit, which sold out quickly. They stayed to enjoy an organic gardening demonstration by Warren Pierce, and to square dance and listen to live music on the Mission lawn. At that first market the demand greatly exceeded supply. For one thing, growers hadn’t known how much to bring; they didn’t anticipate just how many customers were waiting for their fresh produce. And in many cases the farmers/growers were just starting out. They didn’t have the supply yet. They learned to produce more for future markets, and more local farmers signed on as the market continued and grew. The Santa Barbara County Agricultural Commission was charged with certifying the farms and farmers, which required a trip to the farm so that an ag agent could insure that farmers grow what they sell. At first, the ag commission charged a $50 annual fee, which was steep for that first group of farmers. In 1983 the fee was lowered to $15 per farmer per year, and the farmers signed on. Our market then became an official Certified Farmers Market. 42 | EDIBLE SANTA BARBARA SPRING 2016
Some of the farmers present at the first market were Randy Wade, Bill and Delia Coleman, John Tappia, Chris Thompson, John Evart and Margie Popper, Ross Vale and Claudia Kane, Peter Risley, Metta and Ernest Thomsen, Tom Shepherd, and Fred Munch. All were local. Another market was held in April in the parking lot of the Santa Barbara County Bowl. This continued for another market or two, meeting monthly, and then the Saturday market was moved down the street
to the parking lot of Santa Barbara High School. Within about a year, the market was able to meet weekly. Early on there was some trouble with the health department, as the planners needed to deal with issues such as sinks for washing hands. Live animals were banned from the market, as were prepared foods. The market organizers, largely John Evarts and Margie Popper, were able to meet the health department requirements. Looking back, and reviewing old market correspondence and newspaper articles, I marvel that the market was able to get going at all, with so many hurdles needing to be resolved. Randy Wade and other dedicated farmers and organizers put in literally hundreds of hours and their own money to get the market up and running. Almost every person I interviewed acknowledged that Randy, who still sells on Saturdays, had been the driving force behind our farmers market. Besides his work on the market, Randy leased land near Hollister and Turnpike, and subsequently sublet the land to other young farmers so they could get started. Many of the original growers from our early markets are still going strong these many years later. Others have moved out of the area and have continued farming elsewhere, such as the Santa Ynez Valley, Hawaii, Baja Mexico and Canada. The farmer known as BD (Bob Dautch) was growing produce on empty plots of
Tom Shepherd was one of the farmers present at the first market at the Mission and is still a regular fixture at the market today.
EdibleSantaBarbara.com SPRING 2016 | 43
land in Isla Vista. Friends of his nearby were doing the same: one well-known farm was called the Human Bean Farm. When I asked how they obtained water, BD said, “We ran hoses out the windows of nearby homes and apartments. We called it ‘guerrilla watering.’” At the time there was a building moratorium in IV, and the landlords were happy to let the farmers use their vacant parcels of land for growing, as long as they maintained the properties well, keeping weeds abated, so they could pass city weed inspections. At the time, BD was growing food primarily for his own use. His participation in the market, at first, was to share and sell his overflow. The first informal market BD remembers attending was held at Del Playa Acres in Isla Vista. Soon he joined the Santa Barbara market at the County Bowl, and then the market at the high school. To get his produce to market, BD put the veggies on a cart, and pulled the cart with his bicycle from IV, taking the bike path for much of the ride, then pedaling across town to Santa Barbara High. Happy customers awaited his arrival. Tom Shepherd began farming organically in 1973. He’s farmed land all over the county: in Montecito, Hope Ranch, Winchester Canyon, Carpinteria, Nojoqui—20 different parcels of land altogether. “I was an accidental farmer. Initially I planned to create a community garden.” He went into farming because he was concerned about pesticide use and health. Tom’s signature salad mix became a popular item on local restaurant menus. Chris Thompson has been farming in the area since 1970, and is highly regarded by his peers. Chris worked at Fairview Gardens in Goleta in the early ’70s. He found he loved farming more than marketing. He spent 25 years working with John Givens, who has a large organic farm in Santa Barbara and has a strong presence at our markets. Since 2011, Chris has been farming for Rancho San Julian in the Lompoc Area. In the early days of the market, Chris said that the public was not educated about farmers markets. A customer would complain, for example, that his carrots were too expensive, that he could get them cheaper at the supermarket. Over the years most customers have begun to realize that they are getting better quality, and also that a small farmer may need to charge more for his or her produce than a large operation. 44 | EDIBLE SANTA BARBARA SPRING 2016
Carol Ostroff and her husband, Geege, are usually situated at the northeast entrance to the Saturday market. Carol and Geege began selling at the market during its first year at the high school. They sold herbs, plant starts, flowers and a few vegetables. One time she made a couple of wreaths made of herbs and flowers, and this turned out to be very popular. Now she is known for her wreaths, and also for her botanical salves. She worked for the CEC for years, and Geege and Carol have lived and worked at the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden for 30 years. Carol started the initiative, still in effect, to ban pesticide use on our public school grounds. Bill and Delia Coleman, for many years fixtures at our Saturday market, are
“I consider our farmers to be visionaries and heroes, and am grateful every day for the food they provide our community.” still farming in Carpinteria. Now they sell primarily at the busy Santa Monica Markets. Their son Romeo handles a lot of the farming these days. This raises the question: What will happen when our older farmers retire? Sam Edelman, current market manager, says there are a lot of young farmers joining the market. In some cases they are the children of farmers: John Givens’ sons Matt and Bryan are both active on the family farm, for example. Other farmers don’t have a family farming background. Most have mentored with more experienced farmers and then started to farm on their own, such as Jacob Grant of Roots Organic Farm, who trained with master farmer Shu Takikawa of The Garden Of….. in Santa Ynez. I spoke with Michael Ableman, formerly the farmer and founder/director of Fairview Gardens Farm in Goleta for 25 years. He started bringing produce to our farmers market in 1981. Michael now farms in British Columbia, Canada, at his Foxglove Farm on Salt Spring Island and in Vancouver, where he directs an urban farming program. A well-known writer, speaker and educator on organic farming, he talked about the markets, then and now: “The early farmers markets had a wonderful energy. There was a sense among
growers that we were a family. We would always sell out—no matter how much we brought to the market, everything was gone by 10:30, so competition [between farmers] was not an issue. There were less rules, but eventually regulations brought on the need for management.” The essential element of the farmers market, according to Michael Ableman, is that it is “the great gathering place. People come for the food, of course, but for so much more: to engage with people from the land, creating an essential dialogue that informs the work that we do. Customers want to know each farmer’s stories, and want to know how they farm. They want to know why the carrots are so sweet this time of year, and why the peaches are large—or small. Food is the medium to connect with the 1½% of the population that is feeding the other 98% of us.” What began as a few tables and umbrellas, over time, has become a movement—all across the country. Getting into markets now is competitive, and many markets have long waiting lists for vendors to participate. Our market in Santa Barbara includes not just local farmers but producers from other parts of the state, who offer items not available locally: dates from the desert, fresh milk, nuts and stone fruits from the Central Valley. In California alone there are now 700 markets—and around 2,200 certified producers. If every dream begins with a dreamer, then Randy Wade dreamed the dream of the farmers market. He likes to stay in the background, so forgive me, Randy, for calling you out. Of course he didn’t do it alone: He’d be the first to acknowledge the many others who have helped our markets soar. I consider our farmers to be visionaries and heroes, and am grateful every day for the food they provide our community. So when you see a farmer—and farmers markets are the place to see them—please remember to thank them for all they do. Janice Cook Knight is the author of The Follow Your Heart Cookbook: Recipes from the Vegetarian Restaurant and Follow Your Heart’s Vegetarian Soup Cookbook. She has taught cooking for over 25 years and currently teaches a cookbook-writing workshop. Her article in the Fall 2014 issue of Edible Santa Barbara, “Hurray for the Orange, Red and Gold: The Season for Persimmons,” won the 2015 M.F.K. Fisher Award in the Print Category. JaniceCookKnight.com
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No Cider House Rules Words and photos by Wendy Thies Sell
Santa Barbara County winemakers Mikey Giugni and Michael Brughelli at Scar of the Sea winery in Santa Maria.
46 | EDIBLE SANTA BARBARA SPRING 2016
Barrel-aged and bottle-conditioned Clementine Carter sparkling feijoa/apple wine.
A
fter a long day of sipping, swishing and, yes, spitting seemingly endless barrel samples, a glass of wine is not necessarily what most winemakers reach for after work. When young Santa Barbara County winemaker Mikey Giugni was learning to make sparkling wine in Tasmania a few years ago, he and fellow cellar workers downed something else to quench their thirst. “We drank a lot of cider,” says Mikey. “And it wasn’t the sweet kind of cider that we have here in the States. It was very dry and it was crisp and it was like a white wine, but you could drink a lot of it.” When he returned home to California in 2011, he noticed slim pickings for hard cider. “I thought, ‘Shoot. I’m gonna make some cider!’”
EdibleSantaBarbara.com SPRING 2016 | 47
Mikey Giugni barrel sampling at the Scar of the Sea Winery.
Mikey got in his truck and headed for the nearby Avila Valley, home to several well-established apple orchards. “I pulled up with a tank and they juiced me 80 gallons of apple cider, fresh juice, straight from the press into my little tank. I took it down here to CCWS [Central Coast Wine Services, in Santa Maria] and I had a white wine barrel, put it in the barrel, and voilá!” Lab analysis on the apples confirmed that an apple’s chemistry is relatively close to a grape’s; the sugar is lower but the acids are similar. By 2002 Mikey and fellow winemaker Michael Brughelli had co-founded Scar of the Sea winery in Santa Maria. Since then, the two friends and fellow Cal Poly grads have not only handcrafted beautifully elegant and interesting Chardonnay and Pinot Noir (600 cases a year), they have quickly fine-tuned the art of making dry, sparkling hard cider (600 cases a year). “The cider that we make appeals to people that are fans Newtown Pippin, Black Twig and Golden Delicious apples from Aptos Hills.
48 | EDIBLE SANTA BARBARA SPRING 2016
The 2014 Scar of the Sea California Hard Cider.
of sparkling wine or Champagne,” says Michael. “It’s more reminiscent of a Champagne than your typical cider. We chill our cider and pour it into a wine glass.” “People often are a little confused when they have our ciders because they don’t taste apples,” adds Mikey. “In fact, that’s not what we want them to taste like. We want all these other characters: the orchard that it comes from, the vintage.” Scar of the Sea’s 2014 California Hard Cider, an aromatic blend of orchards and apple varieties, is a fragrant bouquet of white flowers and gardenias, tasting like a juicy blend of white nectarines and apricots. Scar of the Sea’s flagship cider, called Arkansas Black Cider, is made from juice from one Paso Robles orchard, aged eight months in barrel. “This is our favorite. It’s the most interesting cider,” says Mikey while tasting with Michael in the winery. “Lemon and lime and white flowers, more like orange blossoms, very fine bubbles. If you tasted this blind, you would be hard pressed to guess apple cider.” “While maybe this isn’t a white Burgundy, it is complex, and there is a lot going on in these ciders,” adds Michael. The Scar of the Sea guys incorporate winemaking techniques when crafting cider, starting with the finest fruit that they can find. “We seek out the highest-quality apples,” Mikey says. “I’m willing to drive up to Aptos to find apples that have been in an orchard for 100 years; Aptos Hills, people call it. It’s an old apple area.” That is where he picked three and a half tons of Newtown Pippin, Black Twig and Golden Delicious apples on October 30, 2015.
Mikey is especially fond of the Newtown Pippin. “It’s a squatty apple. It’s got this scaring on top; they always do. It’s a pretty signature. It’s pretty tart and crisp, but it has more flavor than Granny [Smith]. It’s actually a better apple than Granny, but it’s lower yielding and it’s not as pretty, so it kind of fell out of favor.” Before noon, Mikey had harvested, pressed and ground the apples and was on his way back to Santa Maria with 500 gallons of fresh juice. That afternoon at the winery, we tasted that unpasteurized apple juice straight from the tank and it was remarkably flavorful with strong notes of cinnamon and nutmeg. “It’s just good apples,” emphasizes Mikey as he pumps the cider straight into oak barrels. It starts fermenting naturally because of the native yeasts on the apple skins and in the juice. Fermentation lasts several weeks and then the cider “goes dry.” Mikey and Michael top it and leave it alone for a few months in barrel. The lees, or solids, settle to the bottom, and then they rack [pump] the clean juice into a tank and dump the lees. The juice goes back into the barrel to age until they deem fit. That base wine gets racked back into a tank and they add the amount of dextrose and yeast that they want to achieve carbonation in the bottle; less carbonation than Champagne, but more than beer. “People who make good white wine pay a lot of attention to the wine,” says Mikey. “It’s very hard to make very good white wine—same thing goes with cider.” These dry, light ciders, with approximately 9% alcohol, pair extremely well with a variety of foods. “The easy ones would be oysters, sushi, salads, nuts and charcuterie, anything salty,” suggests Mikey. “The cool thing about cider is it transcends a lot of seasons. It can be super festive!” “Cider and Thanksgiving is, like, ‘lights out,’” says Michael. Mikey also collaborates in the cellar with fellow Santa Barbara County winemaker Sonja Magdevski of Casa Dumetz Wines.
Scar of the Sea Cider in barrel.
EdibleSantaBarbara.com SPRING 2016 | 49
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“We just started brainstorming like crazy. ‘What about this? What about that?’ Pretty soon we had a list of a hundred flavors we wanted to experiment with,” says Sonja. In 2014, Sonja and Mikey took a creative leap of faith, starting an intriguing label called Clementine Carter. They blended Grenache Blanc and fresh apple juice, making wineand-cider hybrids at her Buellton winery. “Really crisp, clean, really pretty, tons of vanilla, more winelike than cider-like,” says Sonja, as we taste together. Another unique experiment had beautiful results: their barrel-aged and bottle-conditioned Clementine Carter sparkling feijoa/apple wine. Feijoa [pronounced fay-ZHO-uh] is pineapple guava that looks like a small kiwi with the texture of an avocado inside. “It’s the most aromatic, beautifully textured fruit I’ve ever had. It’s like every tropical flavor and aroma that you could imagine,” says Sonja. Mikey harvested the feijoa from his friends’ 740-acre avocado and exotic fruit estate, Stepladder Ranch in Cambria. “Mikey mashed up that fruit and added fruit back in the barrel. We took apple juice, added the feijoa fruit to it, then fermented it. It’s super unique, totally dry; it’s like violets and jasmine and vanilla. I feel like I’m eating an exotic orchid. I know that sounds crazy, but it’s so indescribable.” Sonja sells Clementine Carter products in 500ml bottles, exclusively at her place, Babi’s Beer Emporium in Los Alamos. “They’re all beautiful,” she adds. “Cider’s fun!” Clementine Carter’s 2016 releases will include a unique cider/Semillon co-ferment with bubbles. Outside-the-box beverages like these are not a hard sell on the Central Coast, where more and more consumers crave something cutting-edge. “There are adventurous drinkers here,” says Michael. “New products are well received.” “The most important thing about cider is it’s not that serious,” sums up Mikey. “We might be serious when we do it, but the goal is always to be playful and to have fun and to make things that are approachable. At the end of the day, we just want to pop this open and drink it and talk about other things, ya know?”
Resources For information on Scar of the Sea wine and cider go to ScarOfTheSeaWines.com; for Babi’s Beer Emporium particulars, visit BabisBeerEmporium.com.
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Wendy Thies Sell is a familiar face on the Central Coast having anchored the local TV news for 12 years at KSBY and KCOY. The four-time Emmy Award-winning journalist and former wine and food columnist has had features published in Edible San Luis Obispo, Wine Enthusiast and Santa Barbara Seasons.
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Sous-Vide
for the
People Words and Photos by Rosminah Brown
A pork loin is cooked sous-vide, then seared and served over sautĂŠed apples.
52 | EDIBLE SANTA BARBARA SPRING 2016
The Anova immersion circulator placed in a six-liter plastic food storage container.
“T
his is the best kitchen gadget I’ve ever bought,” says my friend Nathan. He’s referring to an immersion circulator, the device used for sous-vide cooking. He’s a practical fellow who likes good food, so when he goes out of his way to make a recommendation for an immersion circulator, I’ll listen. He also let me borrow his fancy new device, bringing it hurriedly to the door in one hand while balancing his young child in the other. An hour later I had returned home, filled a cooking pot with warm tap water, dropped in a few farmers market eggs and was retrieving perfectly cooked 63°C. eggs with wonderfully custard silky yolks to top a waiting bowl of ramen. I was sold.
EdibleSantaBarbara.com SPRING 2016 | 53
New York steak is cooked sous-vide then seared and served with pan juices.
“Sous-vide” means “under vacuum” in French. The fundamentals behind the process include slow and low-temperature cooking, and poaching, and the food is contained in a bag to cook in its own juices and marinades. The vacuum, or airless, environment allows the transfer of heating energy of water to the food and its own liquid medium. References to sous-vide cooking go back to the late 1700s. But in the 1970s it developed into the current water bath method for precise cooking of foie gras, and was also used for first-class food service by Air France. This not only produced consistently tender dishes, but also maintained them in peak condition throughout the flights. Sous-vide cooking has been adopted by chefs all over, including Thomas Keller, Joel Robuchon and Grant Achatz. It is now de rigueur in any fine-dining or modernist restaurant. The devices used could be rudimentary (rigged up gear with complicated parts) and this is how sous-vide
54 | EDIBLE SANTA BARBARA SPRING 2016
first entered home kitchens—if you don’t count the hotwater-in-a-cooler method, sometimes referred to as “redneck sous-vide.” However using an immersion circulator removes the calculations and guesswork by providing precise control over the water temperature. I’ve always left sous-vide to the professionals and friends who had the means (both the money and the counter space) to undertake this method of cooking. Now recent innovations mean that the gear needed for sous-vide has become smaller, easier to manage and much more affordable. Its time has come. Brands like Anova, Sansaire, Gourmia and Joule, to name a few, are coming out with compact immersion circulators that don’t require proprietary containers or complicated wires and dials. The circulators are now in the $200 range, often less, compared to the systems that were $400–$800 that could be justified by a high end, high volume production restaurant. Within a week of borrowing my friend’s, the Anova circulator went on sale and I had my own for $150. It is about the size of a stick blender, and can be placed in any existing cooking pot or waterproof container. This brand has a simple interface, with just an on/off button and a large dial to set the desired temperature. There are options to use timers, wi-fi and Bluetooth, but the basics are in place and intuitive. You also don’t need all the complementary gadgets, but are welcome to expand into vacuum sealers, holding racks or floating balls that bob around to keep water from evaporating. I bought a six-liter plastic food storage bin and two lids for $20 from a restaurant supply store, and cut a hole in one of the lids to fit the circulator snugly. I insulate the container even more by clipping a towel around it like
Sous-vide cooked and seared chicken breast is remarkably moist and tender.
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a warm scarf. The remaining lid lets the bin be used for other household tasks when I’m not cooking in it. A vacuum sealer isn’t required either. Some vacuum sealer bags come with zipper locks. Air can be removed through water immersion—lowering the bagged food into a pot of water with just the zipper remaining above, and the pressure of the water removes the air, then the bag can gently be zipped shut. Many
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Why It’s Worth the Expense It takes up very little room. Just one cooking pot, and the size can expand if needed. It’s energy efficient. Home-use brands have some variation in energy usage, but generally an immersion circulator can run for 24 hours and use less electricity or energy than running the oven for a few hours. It will be even more energy efficient if you insulate the cooking container with a towel wrap and a lid. Your investment in a good piece of wild-caught Morro Bay King Salmon, a heritage pork tenderloin, a grass-fed beef ribeye or an organic, free-range chicken breast, is worth protecting. You want it to retain its full flavor, and with sousvide you cannot overcook it.
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in Plastic?
When choosing plastic bags, be sure to use ones that are rated microwave-safe. Bags made from polyethylene are generally microwave-safe, whereas those that contain polyvinyl chloride plastics generally are not. If you are still hesitant about using plastic, you can cook eggs in their shell, and there are techniques for using canning jars and food-grade reusable silicon bags in sous-vide cooking.
EdibleSantaBarbara.com SPRING 2016 | 55
What to Cook Sous-Vide
S EGGS
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Making eggs is delightfully gratifying using the immersion circulator. Slow and low heat for cooking eggs is not new— Japanese women bathing in hot springs were known to set baskets of eggs in the water for a bath of their own—a delicious meal of onsen tamago to be enjoyed after a long soak. Use the best eggs you can find. Eggs from your friend’s chickens, or from the local farmers market. They will be delicious. No vacuum pouch is needed as the egg is already contained within its shell and it can loll around lazily for 50 minutes in a 145.5°F. water bath while you cook something else in the pot. It is a marvel to crack one open for yourself or a guest and out drops the egg with a dense, silky and custardy yolk. This is the 63°C. egg that fine restaurants tout on their menus and it belongs in your house, on toast or in your bowl of noodles.
S C HICKEN
The chicken breast is a piece of meat that’s risen and fallen in popularity over time. The actual white meat. What are your usual flavorings? Salt, pepper, a slice of lemon and a sprig of rosemary? Or a spice rub? Use what you like. Season a bone-in, skin-on chicken breast and put it in a bag, and seal it. Cooking it for 90 minutes to four hours at 140°F. will give you a hot, tender and juicy chicken breast that you’ve not experienced before. That same time at 150°F. will give you firmer flesh but nonetheless still juicy. Don’t forget to sear it in a hot pan shimmering with a little cooking oil or on a hot grill to get the skin crispy. Once cooked and seared, you can pull the bones away easily and then slice it up for serving.
S BEEF
Fact: I’m really bad at steak. To me, there appears to be a small window of opportunity between a steak that’s raw and flabby inside yet charred outside, and steak that’s rock hard. I steer well clear of steak. I know I’m not alone here. All I want is a juicy perfect medium-rare steak, is that so much to ask? Take a New York strip or ribeye, a really good one. Thicker is better, like an inch and a half to two inches thick. Salt and pepper it in the usual way, or add your signature seasonings, maybe throw in a pat of butter, a drizzle of olive oil or a spoonful of bacon fat, and seal it in a bag. Give it a bath for one to four hours at 130°F. That should be enough time to watch a game or go for a hike. Then remove it from the bag, pat it down with a paper towel and give it a good hot sear. You can put the juices from the bag in the pan and reduce to make a sauce. The sear will satisfy your primal yearnings of glistening hot meat over the fire. The taste and tenderness will seal the deal.
people use heavy-duty zipper-lock plastic bags available at any grocery store. I live in a small cottage, and in our mild excuse of a winter the oven can warm the house comfortably. But in the remaining 11½ months of the year, the oven turns my cozy space into a sweat lodge. Cooking with this technique keeps the heat confined to a mild water bath. The immersion circulator has been exceptionally easy to use, and it’s been exceptionally hard to mess up the food I’m cooking. “Precision control” are the key words here. It holds prepared food hot and ready, including meat dishes and vegetable dishes. I can have multiple packets of food made beforehand and kept hot, which is great for multi-course meals. And it reheats food like a dream. That beautiful rare steak piece, or properly barbecued brisket that’s falling-apart tender, is done more justice than a microwave could ever hope for. What doesn’t the immersion circulator do? Since it slowcooks food in a bag, it can never attain the golden brown delicious that is the Maillard reaction. The sear in a fine steak or the crispy skin on salmon or chicken must come from an additional step on a hot pan or an outdoor grill. All you need to achieve is a quick sear, as the food is already cooked to your precise specifications. The sear provides that gratifying sizzle and smell that brings you back into an aromatic kitchen in case you were feeling like it had become more of a lab. Will these new immersion circulators eliminate dining out in the future? No way. The pros have skills in flavoring, pairing, plating that we could never hope to recreate. They cook for you. Restaurants have ambiance, service and wine poured for you in beautiful stemware. Then they clean up for you. Did store-bought paints and color-by-numbers eliminate the artwork of the masters? No way. (And don’t fool yourself.) But will it improve your home-cooked meals? Oh yes. Don’t be scared. You and your food are worth it. Rosminah Brown is a Santa Barbara native who types fast and eats slow. She once jumped in the Neptune Pool at Hearst’s Castle. She is still upset that JR’s BBQ closed. You can read her blog at GutFud.com.
Resources
Artistry in Winemaking Since 1982 Longoria Winery & Tasting Room 415 E. Chestnut Avenue Open Friday through Sunday only 11am– 4:30pm
Our Los Olivos Tasting Room 2935 Grand Avenue Open Daily 11am– 4:30pm
LongoriaWine.com 866-759-4637
Cheese Pâté Salumi Flatbreads Prosciutto Chocolates Nuts Dried fruits Cookies Olives Wine & Beer Sandwiches Insulated totes and more
Locally owned & operated since 2003
The perfect place for all of your picnic provisions
825 Santa Barbara St.
•
965-0318
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cestcheese.com
Breakfast & Lunch | Tues–Sun 9–2 Dinner | Tues–Sat from 5:30 Full Bar Happy Hour | Tues–Sat 4:30–6 Reservations recommended
11 WEST VICTORIA IN VICTORIA COURT 805-770-2143 SCARLETTBEGONIA.NET
One of the U.S. top 15 bakeries in small towns!
There are extensive websites and stacks of books on the subject of sous-vide. Here are two resources that are as consistent and precise as the food that sous-vide provides: The Food Lab by J. Kenji Lopez-Alt at
SeriousEats.com Chef Steps, a food and technology company at
ChefSteps.com
EdibleSantaBarbara.com SPRING 2016 | 57
The Spring
Farmers Market by Pascale Beale
58 | EDIBLE SANTA BARBARA SPRING 2016
I am, by nature, a creature of habit. Most Saturdays will find me slowly meandering through the farmers market aisles, chatting with friends, sampling fruits and vegetables and talking with farmers about their latest harvest. The market is a microcosm of the season and a reflection of nature’s cycles. It is one of my greatest pleasures, one that I savor and the source of many a culinary inspiration. If there is a time of year at the market that I enjoy the most it has to be in springtime; finding the first cherries, relishing the idea of a rhubarb crumble, anticipating the short but sweet apricot season, delving into a plethora of peas, fava beans, pea sprouts, freshly picked asparagus, green garlic and discovering some hidden gem. This season unleashes a mad frenzy in my kitchen, making jams and preserves, testing recipes, savoring an apricot clafoutis, an apricot tart, a tagine filled with Meyer lemons and almonds, roasted cherries, fava bean salads, chanterelle crostini, if we’re lucky enough to find them. I always feel as though the earth has woken up and decided to shower us with a multitude of delicacies, each one fresh, invigorating and tempting. If a color could illustrate a season, then spring is bright green, the luminescent green of the inner part of a fava bean, the fresh green of just-shelled English peas or the vibrant green, tinged with purple, of new asparagus. Is there anything better than filling your market basket with these eye-popping vegetables, then coming home, preparing them, cooking them, drizzled with a fruity olive oil, some fresh herbs and a pinch of coarse sea salt? During the colder months, I hunger for these revitalizing vegetables with their crisp, herbaceous flavors and I have a tendency to go a little overboard when they first arrive, a type of visceral spring fever that propagates salad upon salad and dish upon dish, which in turn calls for impromptu meals with friends, the first al fresco lunch or a picnic in the back country. Can walking through the farmers market generate all of this? Absolutely!” COLIN QUIRT
L
ate last winter I found myself on a plane headed for the mountains in Idaho. The season had come to an end early due to a dearth of snow. It was a good thing, too, lest I be tempted to go and play in the white stuff. I was there to work, so the fewer distractions the better. Some 700 aeronautical miles separated Santa Barbara from my final destination, and I was struck, as I looked down on the landscape 30,000 feet below, at how monochromatic everything looked. Close to 700 miles of a bland khaki-gray, drab-colored patchwork of fields, farms and desert. It was bleak, as though someone had sucked the color out of the earth. It looked and felt parched. Indeed it was and, as we all know, had been for far too many months. The landscape also reminded me of the cold, damp British winters I had slogged through as a child, where everyone longed for a sunny day, some warmth and a sign of the end of the endless grey weather with omnipresent clouds weighting down the ever-paling population. I walked daily in the cold mountains, looking at the dormant landscape, imagining the transformation that would hopefully take place as spring arrived. Like my fellow Londoners who emerged from their winter chrysalis on the first warm day of spring, rushing to the parks to expose their insipid-looking bodies to the sun’s rays, so too, did the earth transform itself with the arrival of more temperate weather. Flower buds emerged, daffodils danced in the breeze trumpeting the new season, long-dormant grasses grew, blossoms bloomed and the earth would come alive. Back on the Central Coast, the arrival of even a little rain set this metamorphosis into action. Tiny bright green shoots emerged from the hillsides, colorful flowers popped up along the roadside and the trees and the soil felt invigorated. Looking down from my bedroom window I watched as the apricot tree in my garden exploded with white-pink powder puff blossoms as though a winter storm had delicately placed snowflakes upon its branches. This was a harbinger of great gustatory things to come.
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rio T s u
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EdibleSantaBarbara.com SPRING 2016 | 59
RECIPES Asparagus Trio Salad with Arugula and Basil (excerpt from Salade: Recipes from the Market Table )
The trio of colors looked so appetizing on my kitchen counter that I decided to make a salad with all three. By a complete coincidence, I had three varieties of basil in my garden and used the small tender leaves from each in the salad. Thai basil is quite strong, so I wouldn’t use too much of it, as it might overpower the delicate flavors of the asparagus.
C h e r r y , p e a n d f a va b e a n s a l a d a
Makes 8 servings Juice and zest of 1 large lemon 5 tablespoons olive oil Sea salt and black pepper
Cherry, Pea and Fava Bean Salad
4 ounces arugula
(excerpt from Salade: Recipes from the Market Table )
1 small bunch each green, purple and Thai basil, leaves removed from the stems and left whole
⁄ 2 pound each green, white and purple asparagus, tips trimmed and left whole, the rest of the stalk cut on a bias into very thin slices 1
⁄ 2 pound shelled English peas (that is the shelled weight so you’ll need about 2 pounds with the shells on) 1
The fava bean and cherry seasons overlap for about four weeks, which doesn’t give you much time to make this salad. You see the cherries but not the fava beans, then the beans but not the cherries. However, when you do get both of them together, they are magical. This salad is the essence of spring. Makes 8 servings Olive oil
Pour the lemon juice, 4 tablespoons of olive oil, a pinch of salt and 4–5 grinds of pepper into the bottom of a medium-sized salad bowl. Whisk together well. Place salad utensils over the top of the vinaigrette. Place the arugula and basil leaves on top of the utensils and set aside. Pour the remaining 1 tablespoon of olive oil into a large skillet placed over medium-high heat. Add the sliced asparagus, the asparagus tips, peas and lemon zest and sauté for 3–4 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from the heat.
4 shallots, peeled and sliced 1
⁄ 2 pound English peas, shelled
1
⁄ 2 pound snap peas, sliced on a bias
1 pound fava beans, shelled (you will need to remove the beans from the pods, and then the outer shell of the fava bean; it’s easier if you blanch them first for 2 minutes) Sea salt and black pepper 1 pound cherries, pitted and halved
Add the asparagus-pea mixture to the salad bowl. Toss all the
Zest and juice of 1 lemon
ingredients until well combined. Divide the salad equally among the plates. The salad is lovely when the asparagus are still warm.
1
⁄ 2 cup basil leaves
1
⁄ 2 cup mint leaves
Pour a little olive oil into a skillet placed over medium heat. Add the shallots and cook for 5 minutes. Add the peas, snap peas and
60 | EDIBLE SANTA BARBARA SPRING 2016
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This is one of those dishes that was inspired by a walk through the farmers market. It was in the middle of asparagus season with fresh green stalks piled up everywhere. When I came across some purple asparagus, they were so beautiful to look at, I couldn’t resist them. The stalks were a deep burgundy with flashes of green peeking through. The same day, I found some white asparagus in another market.
fava beans, a pinch of salt and some pepper and cook for 3 minutes. Remove from the heat and set aside. Pour 3 tablespoons olive oil into the bottom of a salad bowl and then whisk in the lemon zest and juice, a pinch of salt and some black pepper. Place salad utensils over the vinaigrette and then add the cherries to the bowl. Place the mint and basil leaves on top of the cherries and add the cooked peas and fava beans mixture to the bowl.
Roa
i n r o c d ste
ts o c i r p a h t i sh hens w
When you are ready to serve the salad, toss the ingredients well. You can make a different version using chives and cilantro leaves instead of the basil leaves.
Roasted Cornish Hens with Apricots (excerpt from Les Fruits: Savory and Sweet Recipes from the Market Table)
In the garden of my home stands an apricot tree. The first spring we lived here, I watched, mesmerized, as the snow white blossoms bloomed and, a few short weeks later, tiny buds formed. Warmer days brought about a blush on the fruit, yet they were not quite ready. One morning, I heard a host of birds merrily chirping away, eating a delicious breakfast of fresh apricots. I rushed outside, arms flailing, scrambling to pick the ripe fruit. I needed help! I made this dish to thank everyone who had descended upon the house to help with the harvest. It was quick and easy to prepare, scrumptious and satisfying, with the added bonus that it fed lots of people. We sat on the terrace as the sun set, pleased with our day’s work, glass of wine in hand, and tucked into a dish made with the fruits of our labor. My favorite kind of day! Makes 8 servings Olive oil 4 Cornish hens, split along the breast and pressed flat 3 lemons, quartered 12 apricots, halved and pitted 1 large bunch green onions, ends trimmed and sliced 12 shallots, peeled and halved 3 sprigs rosemary 10 sprigs lemon thyme Salt and pepper
Preheat oven to 400°. Pour a little olive oil into a large roasting pan. Turn the Cornish hens in the pan so that they are coated with the oil. Rest the hens skin side up.
Roast for 1 hour. Let the cooked hens rest on a cutting board for 5 minutes before slicing in half. Serve each piece with lots of the apricots, lemons and the lovely pan juices.
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Scatter the lemons, apricots, green onions and shallots around, under and on top of the hens. Add the rosemary and thyme sprigs and sprinkle with some salt and pepper.
EdibleSantaBarbara.com SPRING 2016 | 61
FOR THE FRANGIPANE 4 ounces (11 ⁄ 4 cups) almond meal 3 ounces ( 1 ⁄ 3 cup plus 1 tablespoon) sugar 4 ounces (1 cup) butter, cut into 1-inch pieces 1
⁄ 2 teaspoon vanilla paste or pure vanilla extract
2 eggs 2 ounces ( 1 ⁄ 3 cup) unbleached all-purpose flour
FOR THE FRUIT 4 pounds firm ripe apricots, halved and pitted 2 tablespoons apricot jam
Preheat oven to 400°. Butter a 9- by 12-inch rectangular fluted tart pan and set aside.
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Place all the ingredients for the tart shell in the bowl of a food processor fitted with the metal blade. Pulse until the mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs. Use longer pulses until the dough forms a ball.
Apricot and Frangipane Tart (excerpt from Les Fruits: Savory and Sweet Recipes from the Market Table)
This might sound odd, but when I make this tart, it makes me feel French. It’s odd because I am actually half French. The thing is, the tart is just, well, so French! If I close my eyes, I see myself sitting at a café, a piece of apricot tart before me on a small round bistro table, with an espresso on the side. A vignette of sorts. It’s a dessert that’s guaranteed to make me smile. I hope you like it as much as I do.
Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate it for 20 minutes. Place the almond meal and sugar in the bowl of a food processor. Pulse to combine. Add the butter and vanilla paste and pulse again to mix. Finally, add the eggs and the flour and mix until the frangipane is smooth and homogenous. It will be quite sticky. Place the unwrapped tart dough on a lightly floured board. Roll out the dough to a 10- by 13-inch rectangle, ¼-inch thick. Line the buttered tart pan with the dough. Trim the edges and then prick the dough with a fork. Spread the frangipane mixture ¼ inch deep over the tart base. Starting at one end of the tart, stand the apricots upright in the frangipane. Alternate each row so that the apricots face in opposite directions. They should be tightly packed.
Makes 8 servings
Bake the tart in the center of the oven for 45 minutes.
FOR THE TART SHELL
Remove the tart from the oven and brush the apricots with the apricot jam. Return the tart to the oven and bake for an additional 5–10 minutes. The shell and apricots should be a golden brown. Remove and let cool to room temperature.
9 ounces (2 cups) unbleached all-purpose flour 51 ⁄ 2 ounces (11 tablespoons) butter, cut into small pieces Zest of 1 lemon 1 tablespoon powdered sugar 1 large egg Pinch of salt
62 | EDIBLE SANTA BARBARA SPRING 2016
Pascale Beale grew up in England and France surrounded by a family that has always been passionate about food, wine and the arts. She was taught to cook by her French mother and grandmother. She is the author of The Menu for All Seasons, Salade and Les Fruits. Visit her website and blog: The Market Table at PascalesKitchen.com.
A new dining experience featuring artisanal & seasonal ingredients, celebrating the central coast. 2016 Santa Barbara’s 12 Best Places to Eat – Thrillist.com 131 anacapa st. santa barbara / 805-284-0370 / thelarksb.com
APRIL 21ST - 24TH, 2016
Culinary School Food Truck Full Service Caterer Teambuilding HEATculinary.com 805-242-1151
Photo by Bob Dickey
Photo: Crushed Grape Chronicles
THE PREMIER SPRING WINE & FOOD FESTIVAL GRAND TASTING SATURDAY, APRIL 23RD
RIVER VIEW PARK, BUELLTON 1:00 to 4:00PM Taste 100+ wineries while experiencing eight wine trails with inspired regional cuisine. Enjoy food & wine pairing demonstrations & educational seminars with live music. Revel in the exclusivity (food& wine) of the Connoiseur Club. For information & tickets visit sbvintnersweekend.com or call 805-688-0881
EdibleSantaBarbara.com SPRING 2016 | 63
64 | EDIBLE SANTA BARBARA SPRING 2016
One Feast Fits All
Vegan, Vegetarian, Omnivore—Everyone’s Welcome at This Table by Anna Thomas PHOTOGRAPHY BY VICTORIA PEARSON
T
he way we eat is changing—that’s not news anymore. I remember when, as a budding vegetarian, I couldn’t eat out in Los Angeles— in Los Angeles! — except at a handful of hippie cafés. I became an upstart in the food scene by writing The Vegetarian Epicure in 1972, while I was still a film student at UCLA. I think it was self-defense. Since that time, I’ve cooked a lot, eaten constantly, entertained often and written four more books. And now—good grief—I’m the O.G. Yes, I believe that what I put on the table is important. But there is one thing more important: Who is at the table? Gathering my friends around the table has been one of the joys of my life, and I don’t invite people over just because they eat the same way I do. I’m willing to bet you don’t either. We invite folks because we love them, or we want to know them better or they tell the best jokes! Or maybe simply because we’re related. Can we all sit down and have dinner together? Over the last few years, I have begun to hear more and more laments from people who were afraid to entertain because this one would only eat that and the other one wouldn’t eat this. The way we eat is changing, but we’re different and we’re in very different places on that larger curve. “We need to find a way with food,” I thought, “that allows us to relax and be flexible, and to just have a good time.” Well, here’s the thing: In our traditional American food culture we have a default setting: meat in the middle, grains and vegetables on the side. Those familiar meals could be adapted, of course, but we’d immediately be taking something away, substituting—compromising. Of course, we could prepare two separate
meals, but what a hassle! And let’s face it, then there would be an A meal and a B meal, and who wants to be on the B list? “We’re doing this backwards,” I thought. “Why not start with the food everyone eats?” Everyone eats the watermelon at the picnic. It’s not the vegan watermelon, it’s just the watermelon. Everyone eats the minestrone and the focaccia. Everyone eats the roasted potato wedges with mojo verde that I serve with cocktails, and my wild mushroom risotto. It seemed so simple. Start with the foods everyone eats, create a dish or a meal that works, then add and elaborate… expand with eggs, cheese, fish or meat… make it flexible. Make one meal, but one that can be enjoyed in variations. It became my holy grail: to design meals at which we could sit down together, toast each other and eat happily in my peaceable kingdom. I made a savory chile verde with fat white beans and added chicken to half of it. I made Lebanese-style stuffed peppers filled with aromatic rice and lentils, but added spiced lamb to half the stuffing. I made meals built around hearty pilafs of farro and black rice, surrounded by roasted vegetables—and slices of pork for the omnivores. My easy fish soup became a dinner party favorite. It begins as a robust vegetable soup and the fish and shellfish are added at the last minute, so it can easily be served in two versions. And one spring weekend, after my weekly visit to the Ojai Certified Farmers’ Market, I made a delicate, lemon-perfumed risotto with sautéed fresh fava beans. I offered large shavings of Parmigiano, and passed a platter of sautéed shrimp to be added
Opposite: Carrots served with Carrot Top Pesto.
EdibleSantaBarbara.com SPRING 2016 | 65
as a garnish for those who wanted it. It was a perfect springtime meal, bright and full of the fresh taste of the season. Here is that risotto in a menu that can be kept very simple. Make a salad of the first tender lettuces to begin, and finish with a bowl of strawberries. Or make it a dinner party by adding a starter of carrot-top pesto served with roasted young carrots, crostini and tangy goat cheese. For dessert, combine our amazing local Gaviota strawberries with Ojai tangerines, all drizzled with a light syrup to make a compote that can be enjoyed only at this perfect moment of the year. And invite everyone you like; call them to the table without fear. We long for that social table—it is a place of sharing of stories and jokes, old friendships and new, a place where we can become our best selves. Let’s not give it up just because we don’t all eat the same way!
Lemon Risotto with Sautéed Fresh Fava Beans VEGETARIAN
Although the ingredients are simple, I think of this as a luxury dish: fresh fava beans are a seasonal delicacy, and shelling this many rates as an act of culinary devotion. The risotto is aromatic with lemon zest and richly satisfying with the bright green new favas—a bowlful of spring. Serves 6 to 8 as a center-of-the-plate dish. 5 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for garnish 4 cloves garlic, minced 2 cups peeled fresh green fava beans, from 1 pound shelled beans (see note) 3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
RECIPES Carrot-Top Pesto How many times have you thrown away those bushy green tops? Me, too—but no more. Now I make this deliciously peppery, textured pesto. Have it as a condiment with roasted spring carrots, or roasted new potatoes. Or spread it on crostini with a dab of white cheese. Be sure you have fresh, bright green carrot tops. And if you have no basil to add to the mix, try parsley or cilantro and a few fennel greens instead. Makes about 2 cups 4 ounces trimmed carrot tops (from 1 or 2 bunches), big stems trimmed off 2 cloves garlic 1
⁄ 4 cup (1 ounce) walnuts
1 ounce fresh basil leaves, chopped (1 ⁄ 2 cup) 1
⁄ 2 ounce fresh mint leaves, chopped (1 ⁄ 2 cup), plus more
to taste 3
⁄ 4 teaspoon sea salt
1
⁄ 2 cup extra-virgin olive oil, plus more to taste
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
Pull the fronds of the carrot tops off the stems and discard the stems. Carrot tops have a firm, chewy texture, but the stems are tough. Wash and spin-dry the greens. Pulse the garlic and walnuts briefly in a food processor, then add the various greens and the salt and pulse again, scraping down the sides of the container as needed, until the greens are finely chopped. Add the olive oil and lemon juice and process the pesto until it is smooth.
66 | EDIBLE SANTA BARBARA SPRING 2016
Sea salt 3
⁄ 4 cup finely chopped shallots
8–9 cups light vegetable broth, diluted if salty 21 ⁄ 2 cups arborio rice 1
⁄ 4 cup dry white wine
11 ⁄ 2 tablespoons finely grated lemon zest
⁄ 2 cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, plus more for the table 1
Heat 2 tablespoons olive oil in a medium sauté pan, add the garlic and stir for about 30 seconds. Add the peeled fava beans and sauté them over medium-high heat, stirring almost constantly, for 3 to 4 minutes, or until they color lightly. Add 1 tablespoon lemon juice, sprinkle the beans with a big pinch of sea salt, give them 1 more stir and remove them from the heat. Set them aside as you prepare the rice. Heat the remaining 3 tablespoons olive oil in a large sauté pan and stir the shallots in it over medium heat, with a dash of salt, until they are soft, 6 or 7 minutes. Bring the vegetable broth to a simmer, cover it and keep it hot on the lowest flame. Be sure that your vegetable broth is not too strong or salty. Add the rice to the shallots and stir over medium heat for 2 to 3 minutes. Add the wine and stir as it evaporates. Add 1 cup of the hot vegetable broth, lower the heat to a simmer and stir as the broth is absorbed into the rice. Continue adding broth, about a cup at a time, stirring almost constantly. As each cup of broth is nearly absorbed, add the next cup and stir again, and so on until the rice is tender but firm and a creamy sauce has formed around it, 20 to 25 minutes. Stir in the remaining 2 tablespoons lemon juice and the lemon zest, as well as 2 ⁄ 3 of the sautéed fava beans, reserving the rest for a garnish. Stir in the Parmigiano, and then, just before serving, add a final, generous ladleful of broth. Immediately spoon the risotto into shallow bowls and scatter a few reserved fava beans on top of each serving. Pass the olive oil carafe and the additional grated Parmigiano-Reggiano at the table.
A SEAFOOD VARIATION… Lemon risotto can be made with shrimp instead of fava beans, or with both. Peel and devein about 1 pound of fresh shrimp, wash them and
have them ready as you begin to cook the risotto. When the rice has been cooking about 15 minutes, sauté the shrimp for a moment in some olive oil with a bit of garlic and a splash of white wine. Stir the shrimp into the risotto, or into part of it, just before serving. Or add a few sautéed shrimp on top of individual servings. The large Prawns Sautéed with Garlic, which are left unpeeled, also make a good pairing.
NOTE: ABOUT THOSE FAVA BEANS… The well-protected fava beans must first be taken out of their large pods, then the beans need to be peeled, one by one. It’s a bit of work, but not so much that it should stop you. I timed myself the last time I peeled a pound of shelled favas (about 3 cups beans in their jackets): 20 minutes. Not a tragedy. So bring a pot of water to a boil and drop in the shelled favas. When the water simmers again, give them 2 to 3 minutes, depending on their size. Drain them, rinse briefly with cool water, and then slip off their skins while they are still warm. You’ll have a generous 2 cups when the beans are peeled.
Prawns Sautéed with Garlic GAMBAS À LA PLANCHA
Prawns sautéed in garlic is one of those classic, simple dishes found all over the Mediterranean, from the tapas bars of Spain to the mezze tables of the Middle East. You can sauté prawns or large shrimp in their shells, or you can peel them down to their tails, which makes them an easy finger food. Serves 6 to 8 as a tapa, in a selection of mezze, or as a garnish for pasta. Easy to double. 1 pound large prawns (14–18) 2–3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil 4 large cloves garlic, finely chopped 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice 1
⁄ 2 cup coarsely chopped fresh cilantro
A pinch of sea salt Garnish: Lemon wedges
The prawns can be sautéed in their shells or peeled, depending on how you want to serve them. Sautéing in the shell keeps in a bit more flavor, but peeling the prawns makes them much easier to eat (and you don’t need finger bowls). If peeling the prawns, leave the tails on and remove the dark veins. Heat the olive oil in a large skillet, add the garlic, and add the prawns right on top of it. Cook the prawns over high heat for about a minute, until you see them starting to turn pink, then turn them over. Add the lemon juice and the chopped cilantro and cook another minute or so, just until the prawns have turned pink all over. Exact cooking time depends on the size of the prawns. Sprinkle on a tiny bit of sea salt and serve the prawns with lemon wedges and crusty bread. Longtime Ojai resident Anna Thomas wrote the iconic cookbook The Vegetarian Epicure when she was still a film student at UCLA, followed by its two sequels and Love Soup. Her newest book, Vegan Vegetarian Omnivore: Dinner for Everyone at the Table (W. W. Norton & Co., 2016), hits shelves in April.
EdibleSantaBarbara.com SPRING 2016 | 67
W S PI N R ITNEG R EDIBLE EVENTS S AT U R D AY
MARCH
MARCH
MARCH
Say Hi
Supper for Third Saturday
Meet the Winemaker
Noon–6pm The Alamo Motel in Los Alamos
5:30 & 7:30pm at Bell Street Farm, Los Alamos
19
MARCH
Join the Alamo Motel and Municipal Winemakers in Los Alamos for Muni’s spring wine club pick up party. Pop-up taco shop Escuela Taqueria and live music will be enjoyed by all. RememberTheAlamoMotel.com
S U N D AY
APRIL
Fork & Cork Classic
Foley Estate Vineyard Chardonnay Release and New England Clambake
2–6pm, SB Polo & Racquet Club
APRIL
15–19 Santa Barbara Food and Wine Weekend At Bacara Resort The Santa Barbara Food & Wine Weekend at Bacara celebrates Julia Child’s passion for learning, love of eating well and appreciation for Santa Barbara’s bounty. Weekend includes cooking demos, educational seminars, wine tastings and more. For tickets, visit BacaraCulinaryWeekend.com or call 888 886-9923.
21–24 The Spring Weekend is four days of wine, food and fun throughout Santa Barbara County. Throughout the weekend select wineries host their own events, ranging from winemaker dinners, library tastings, new wine releases, and barrel tastings. Get a Vintners Visa for unique and complimentary offerings at your choice of twelve tasting rooms. SBVintnersWeekend.com
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6 –8pm at the Los Olivos Café, Los Olivos Katie and Bradley Grassini of Grassini Family Vineyards will be in the dining room during regular dinner service to pour tastes of their wines that pair with guest’s selections, and to chat. Dinner reservations strongly suggested. Ongoing on the last Friday of every month, with a different local winemaker. 805 688-7265; LosOlivosCafe.com.
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2–5pm at the Bacara Resort, Santa Barbara Fabulous cuisine by Bacara Resort & Spa will be perfectly paired with new release chardonnays from the Foley Family Wines Collection. $150; for tickets call 805 968-1614 or email Tastingroom@ foleyfoodandwinesociety.com
S AT U R D AY – S U N D AY
W E D N E S D AY
APRIL
APRIL
Earth Day Festival
“Just Desert,” No No No “Just Dessert!”
16–17 Saturday 11am–7pm; Sunday 11am–6pm Alameda Park, Santa Barbara
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5–7pm, The Kitchen at the Santa Barbara Public Market
The Community Environmental Council Earth Day Festival is the signature annual event for the region’s environmental organizations. Food, music and demos. Free. For more info visit SBEarthDay.org
il Fustino presents desserts: cannelé, mousse and individual hands-on summer berry tarts. For more information, visit ilFustino.com.
S AT U R D AY
S AT U R D AY
APRIL
APRIL
T H U R S D AY
Vintners Festival Grand Tasting
Longoria Winemaker Dinner at the Ballard Inn
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Santa Barbara Vintners Spring Weekend
Bell Street Farm’s monthly four-course, family style supper includes a charcuterie plate, antipasto, rotisserie chicken with accompanying vegetables, and dessert. $44 per person, not including beverages, tax or gratuity. Two seatings, 5:30 and 7:30. Ongoing. 805 344-4609; BellStreetFarm.com
APRIL
Food and wine aficionados will savor tastings from an array of Premium Select wines and enjoy gourmet dishes prepared by over 20 plus Santa Barbara County Top chefs and restaurants. Enjoy fantastic wine and food, live entertainment, fun games and one of a kind Silent and Live Auction items. ForkAndCorkClassic.org
APRIL
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10
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F R I D AY
S AT U R D AY
23
APRIL
28
Homemade Cheesemaking Cooking Class
1– 4pm at Riverview Park, Buellton
6:30pm at the Ballard Inn, Ballard
6–9pm at Heat Culinary Kitchen
An afternoon of wine country wine tasting, cuisine and music! More than 120 wineries and restaurants will participate. Includes an Edible Food & Wine Pavilion with cooking demos and opportunities to meet the winemakers. For information and tickets, visit SBVintnersWeekend.com
Join Rick and Diana Longoria at this highly anticipated annual dinner. Chef Budi Kazali will be preparing a delicious five-course meal, expertly paired with Longoria wines. Reservations are limited. For more information and reservations, please contact The Ballard Inn at 805 688-7770 or 800 638-2466.
Learn the art of making cheese in your home kitchen like a traditional fromager. Class will cover the following: Fresh Chevre (Goat Cheese) with Mediterranean Herbs, Pulled Mozzarella, Ricotta, Creamy Burrata, Blue Cheese. For more info visit HeatCulinary.com.
68 | EDIBLE SANTA BARBARA SPRING 2016
For updates and more details on these and other events, visit EdibleSantaBarbara.com S AT U R D AY
S AT U R D AY
MAY
MAY
Middle Eastern Cuisine Cooking Class
Makin’ Jamaican
6:30–9:30pm at Heat Culinary Kitchen
Taste Teaser: Goat Curry Empanadas & Sweet Plantain Chips, Jerk Chicken w/ Tamarind Chutney, Charred Pineapple Slaw, Jerk Grilled Corn w/ Toasted Coconut & Jerk Aioli, and Dark & Stormy Rum Cake. For more information, visit TheFoodLiaison.com.
7
M AY
14
6-9pm, The Food Liaison
Use the exotic spices of the Middle East to create deliciously aromatic dishes. Learn how to make Dolmas (Cold Stuffed Grape Leaves); Sambousek Bilahm (Meat Turnovers); Poached Monkfish over Saffron Vermicelli Noodles; Mahalla Beya (Milk Pudding). $65. For more info visit HeatCulinary.com. S AT U R D AY
S AT U R D AY
W E D N E S D AY
MAY
MAY
MAY
Zaca University Syrah Clone Seminar
Louisiana-style Crawfish Boil
Dressing Up
Noon at Buttonwood Winery, Solvang
5–7pm at The Kitchen, SB Public Market
11am–2pm at Zaca Mesa Winery
Come out to the Buttonwood vineyard and devour some little mud-bugs and other grub, listen to the Zydeco Zippers and drink delicious Buttonwood wine. $100. For more info, call 805 688-3032 or visit ButtonwoodWinery.com.
14
Join the Zaca Mesa winemakers as they take you through an in-depth tasting and discussion of multiple Syrah clones. Tickets include lunch. Space is limited; to reserve contact Ashley@zacamesa.com.
14
18
By customer request, il Fustino coaches you on how to create vinaigrettes and dressings. Everyone gets to exercise their alchemy! For more information, visit ilFustino.com.
T H U R S D AY
S AT U R D AY
M O N D AY
MAY
MAY
MAY
Classic French Cooking Class
Los Alamos Third Saturday Evening Stroll
Red, White and Bubbly
19
21
6:30–9:30pm at Heat Culinary Kitchen
5–8pm, downtown Los Alamos
Butter is at the center of all things French… add a lemon soufflé and you have the end to a classic meal. Learn how to make Vegetable Cassoulet, Potato Gratin, Duck Breasts Poached in Brown Butter Sauce, Souffles Chauds au Citron (Warm Lemon Souffle). For more info visit HeatCulinary.com.
The Los Alamos merchants on Bell Street invite everyone to join the fun and experience Los Alamos community charm first hand with its new Third Saturdays program. Ongoing. For more information, call 805 344-1900.
11am–6pm at the Riverbench Winery Santa Barbara Tasting Room In observance of Memorial Day, Riverbench Santa Barbara will create a special mixed flight of Red, White and Bubbly to “Cheers” to our service men and women. Flights will be $15 for non club members and complimentary for club members and military personnel. Riverbench.com
S AT U R D AY
S AT U R D AY
S AT U R D AY
JUNE
JUNE
JUNE
Los Olivos Jazz and Olive Festival
Weekly Meal Series: Essential Grilling Guide
Santa Barbara Wine Festival
4
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30
1–4pm at Lavinia Campbell Park, Los Olivos Spend a Saturday afternoon in the beautiful Santa Ynez Valley, tasting wine from 30 local wineries, listening to world-class, professional jazz musicians, and sampling 30 different olive-themed dishes prepared by local chefs. $60; JazzAndOliveFestival.org
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6–9pm at The Food Liaison
Santa Barbara Natural History Museum
Taste Teaser: Grilled Squash Ribbons w/ Prosciutto & Mint Dressing, Rosemary Dijon Grilled Lamb Chops, Grilled Yams w/ Maple Cayenne Glaze, and Smoky Glazed Asparagus. For more information, visit TheFoodLiaison.com.
Swirl, sip and savor wines from premier Central Coast wineries complemented with sweet and savory delectable delights on the beautiful grounds of the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. For details and to purchase tickets visit SBNature.org/winefestival
EdibleSantaBarbara.com SPRING 2016 | 69
edible
SA NTA BARBA R A COUNT Y
E AT DRINK LOC AL GUIDE & MAPS
Santa Barbara County has its own unique food tradition and lifestyle. We’d like to help you find some of the area restaurants, bakeries, food producers and specialty retail shops that contribute to the distinctively Santa Barbara experience. From Ballard to Carpinteria, and from catering to wine tasting, our Guide will help you find what you are looking for and more.
Ballard Ballard Inn & Restaurant 2436 Baseline Ave. 805 688-7770 BallardInn.com Elegant accommodations, attentive staff and award winning cuisine make the Ballard Inn & Restaurant one of the most sought after small luxury inns in the Santa Barbara Wine Country.
Buellton Alma Rosa 250-G Industrial Way 805 688-9090 AlmaRosaWinery.com With certified organic vineyards in the Sta. Rita Hills, Alma Rosa focuses on Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, as well as other food friendly wines with the high acid and extraordinary balance for which Richard Sanford’s wines have been known since 1976.
The Hitching Post II 406 E. Hwy. 246 805 688-0676 HitchingPost2.com A favorite of locals and visitors since 1986. Serving wood-grilled fare, prepared in the regional barbecue tradition, along with their highly regarded Hitching Post Wines. Casual and relaxed setting.
Carpinteria The Food Liaison 1033 Casitas Pass Rd. 805 200-3030 TheFoodLiaison.com Catering. Counter. Classes. Utilizing many locally grown organic ingredients, enjoy daily rotating entrées and soups, seasonal menu, and gourmet salad bar. Corporate and event catering since 2013. Sign up for cooking classes online. Lunch Counter Mon–Fri 11am–3pm. 70 | EDIBLE SANTA BARBARA SPRING 2016
Giannfranco’s Trattoria
Backyard Bowls
666 Linden Ave. 805 684-0720 Giannfrancos.com
5668 Calle Real 805 770-2730 BackyardBowls.com
Experience authentic Italian regional cuisine at this family-owned and family-operated trattoria in downtown Carpinteria. Chef Giovanni prepares each dish from the freshest local and imported foods to offer his creative take on Tuscan grill specialties. Weekday lunch served 11am–3pm. Weekend lunch served noon–3pm. Dinner served 5–9pm; closed Tue.
Santa Barbara’s most innovative breakfast and lunch spot featuring Acai Bowls and smoothies. They also offer oatmeal, yogurt and more.
HEAT Culinary 4642 Carpinteria Ave. 805 242-1151 HeatCulinary.com Santa Barbara County’s culinary school, food truck and full service caterer. HEAT events are known for personalized service, organic ingredients, large portions and attention to detail. Offering originality and undivided attention to create a memorable event.
Sly’s 686 Linden Ave. 805 684-6666 SlysOnline.com Sly’s is known for great food, with an emphasis on farmers market and local produce, great cocktails and great times in Carpinteria. Open Mon–Fri for lunch 11:30am–3pm; lounge menu weekdays 3–5pm; dinner Sun–Thu 5–9pm, Fri and Sat 5–10pm; and weekend brunch & lunch Sat–Sun 9am–3pm.
Goleta Bacara Resort & Spa 8301 Hollister Ave. 844 276-0955 BacaraResort.com Nestled on the bluff and beaches of the Gaviota coast, Bacara offers relaxed luxury and incomparable natural beauty. Additional features include a four-story spa, wellness center, zero-edge saline swimming pools, restaurants, lounges and tasting room.
Goodland Kitchen & Market 231 S. Magnolia Ave. 805 845-4300 GoodlandKitchen.com A quick service café specializing in delicious, wellprepared, affordable breakfasts and lunches, served outside under the magnolia tree. Food prepared fresh daily, in small batches with ingredients from local farmers, to provide an exceptional and unexpected culinary experience in the heart of Old Town Goleta. Breakfast and lunch, indoors or outside on the patio, Mon–Fri 8am–2:30pm.
Lompoc Central Coast Specialty Foods 115 E. College Ave., Ste. 10 805 717-7675 CentralCoastSpecialtyFoods.com High quality local & imported specialty foods, including charcuterie, gourmet cheeses, a fullservice deli, exotic meats (alligator, wild boar, bison and more), specialty foods from around the world, and local beers and wines. Catering available; small intimate affairs to large special events. Open MonWed 10am–6pm, Thu–Fri 10am–7pm, Sat 10am–6pm and Sun 10am–4pm.
Foley Estates 6121 E. Hwy. 246 805 737-6222 FoleyWines.com Foley Estates Vineyard & Winery is the realization of vintner Bill Foley’s dream to produce world class Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Syrah in Santa Barbara County. Open daily 10am–5pm.
Longoria Wines
Bob’s Well Bread
Plenty on Bell
415 E. Chestnut Ave. 866-759-4637 LongoriaWine.com
550 Bell St. 805 344-3000 BobsWellBread.com
508 Bell St. 805 344-2111 PlentyOnBell.com
Longoria Wines is a small family owned winery producing acclaimed artisanal wines from some of the finest vineyards in Santa Barbara County. Visit their tasting room in Los Olivos at 2935 Grand Avenue, daily 11am–4:30pm or at their new winery and tasting room in Lompoc at 415 E. Chestnut Avenue, open Friday through Sunday 11am–4:30pm.
Bob’s Well Bread is about great bread, made the oldfashioned way—handcrafted in small batches and baked to perfection in a custom-built, stone-deck oven. Stop by their bakery for baguettes, croissants, bagels and more. Closed Tue and Wed.
Long-time Los Alamos chef and local favorite Jesper Johansson is back in the kitchen at Plenty on Bell, serving local, seasonal food for lunch, seven days a week.
Scratch Kitchen 610 N. H. St. 805 819-0829 Scratch-Kitchen.com With a wealth of local and seasonal produce and local wines, Scratch Kitchen aims to highlight all the best culinary elements of the Lompoc and Santa Ynez Valleys. Open for lunch and dinner Tuesday through Saturday 11am–9pm, brunch Sunday 10am–2pm, and Sunday dinner 5pm–9pm.
Los Alamos Babi’s Beer Emporium 380 Bell St. 805 344-1911 BabisBeerEmporium.com Great beer. Impeccable selection. Great fun. Adventurous beer drinkers can discover unique, hard-to-find craft beers, ciders and special projects—on tap or in bottle. Stay to have a bite from Craft Kitchen's weekly small plate specials. Thu 4–8pm, Fri–Sat noon–8pm, Sun noon-6pm.
Bell Street Farm Eatery & Market 406 Bell St. 805 344-4609 BellStreetFarm.com This cozy and delicious eatery is surrounded by gorgeous vineyards and farmland. Award winning cuisine and sophisticated yet comfortable design, a distinct environment to enjoy a meal, snack or wine tasting for residents and visitors alike. Assemble your own picnic baskets and accessories for creating a portable meal, as well as gifts and merchandise from local artisans and some of the best of California. Thu and Mon 11am–4pm, Fri–Sun 11am–5pm.
Casa Dumetz 388 Bell St. 805 344-1900 CasaDumetzWines.com A boutique winery specializing in Rhone varietals crafted with premier Santa Barbara County fruit. Their wines are sold almost exclusively at their tasting room in historic Los Alamos and through their wine club. Open Thu noon–7pm; Fri–Sat 11am–7pm; Sun 11–6pm. Vineyard tours and barrel sampling available by appointment.
Full of Life Flatbread 225 W. Bell St. 805 344-4400 FullofLifeFoods.com On weekends Full of Life Flatbread converts their production flatbread bakery space into a restaurant and offers an extremely innovative menu based almost entirely on what is grown locally and in season. Open Thu–Sat 5–10pm; Sun 4–8pm.
Martian Ranch & Vineyard 9110 Alisos Canyon Rd. 805 344-1804 MartianVineyard.com The Martian Ranch tasting room is open Wed–Sun 11am–5pm. Taste their estate grown biodynamically farmed wines for an out-of-this-world experience! Winery tours daily; vineyard tours on the weekends.
Pico at The General Store 458 Bell St. 805 344-1122 LosAlamosGeneralStore.com Pico at The Los Alamos General Store brings a new culinary, wine and shopping experience to "Little LA", in the heart of Santa Barbara's Wine Country.
Los Olivos Alta Maria Vineyards 2933 Grand Ave., Ste. A 805 686-1144 AltaMaria.com Striving to make the best wine possible in a conscious manner, Alta Maria Vineyards utilizes organic and sustainable techniques along with conventional methods that leave no indelible mark on the people, places and products around them. Tasting room open daily 11am–5pm. Native9 is offered for sale daily and can be tasted during Heritage Tastings.
The Brander Vineyard 2401 N Refugio Rd. 805 688-2455 Brander.com Established in 1975, The Brander Vineyard is one of the oldest and most distinguished wineries in the Santa Barbara County. Founder Fred Brander has dedicated himself to making exceptional block designates of estate Sauvignon Blanc and Cabernet Sauvignon that push the quality envelope for Bordeaux style wines. Open daily 11am–4pm. (11am–5pm after May 1)
Global Gardens 2450 Alamo Pintado Rd. 800 307-0447 GlobalGardensOnline.com Global Gardens is Santa Barbara County’s premier Certified Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil producer. Visit their demonstration farm and tasting bar for their signature tasting palette of over 12 tastings, education, worldly recipes and more. Fri–Sun 10am–4pm or by appointment.
EdibleSantaBarbara.com SPRING 2016 | 71
Los Olivos Wine Merchant & Café 2879 Grand Ave. 805 688-7265 LosOlivosCafe.com Bringing together the best flavors of the Central Coast. Their award-winning wine list offers over 500 wines to enjoy with their fresh, seasonal and local cuisine, or to enjoy at home. Open for lunch and dinner daily 11:30am–8:30pm (8pm Sun) and breakfast Sat–Sun 8–10:30am.
Olive Hill Farm 2901 Grand Ave. 805 693-0700 OliveHillFarm.com Specializing in local olive oils, flavored oils and balsamic vinegars as well as many locally produced food products. Olive oil and vinegar tastings with fresh local bread available. Open daily 11am–5pm.
Zaca Mesa Winery 6905 Foxen Canyon Rd. 805 688-9339 ZacaMesa.com Since 1973, the family-owned winery has been dedicated to crafting some of Santa Barbara County’s most distinctive wines. Tasting room and picnic area open daily 10am–4pm.
Montecito American Riviera Bank 525 San Ysidro Rd. 805-335-8110 AmericanRivieraBank.com Offering a local and sustainable approach to banking. The founders of American Riviera Bank are a carefully selected group of successful, prominent, experienced and influential community and business leaders who understand the unique needs of the Santa Barbara community. Open Mon–Thu 9am–5pm; Fri 9am–5:30pm.
Bree'Osh 1150 Coast Village Rd. 805 969-2500 Breeosh.com Bree’Osh is a French artisan bakery café specializing in sweet and savory brioche bread made with traditional sourdough. Featuring local, organic, high quality ingredients. Open 7am–3pm. Closed Mondays.
Here’s The Scoop 1187 Coast Village Rd. 805 969-7020 ScoopSB.com Here’s The Scoop is a local, family-owned business that makes traditional Italian gelato flavors like Stracciatella and Pistachio. Their seasonal farmers market sorbets use local, organic farm fresh fruits, vegetables and herbs. Sorbets are non-dairy, organic and vegan. Mon– Thu 1-9pm, Fri-Sat noon–10pm, Sun noon–9pm.
Merci to Go Montecito Country Mart 1024 Coast Village Rd. 310 270-5272 MerciToGo.com Gourmet food shop serving local, organic and seasonal items. Lunch, dinner and sweet treats all packaged and ready to go. Owned by Elizabeth Colling, pastry chef and former food editor of Martha Stewart Living. Instagram: @mercitogo 72 | EDIBLE SANTA BARBARA SPRING 2016
Tecolote Bookstore 1470 E. Valley Rd. 805 969-4977 Tecolote Bookstore is an independent bookstore located in the upper village of Montecito. Open Mon– Fri 10am–5:30pm; Sat 10am–5pm; closed Sun.
Santa Barbara Backyard Bowls 3849 State St. 805 569-0011 BackyardBowls.com Santa Barbara’s most innovative breakfast and lunch spot featuring Acai Bowls and smoothies. They also offer oatmeal, yogurt and more.
Il Fustino 3401 State St. 805 845-3521 ilFustino.com Il Fustino is Santa Barbara’s first and finest olive oil and vinegar tasting room. Il Fustino purveys only the finest and freshest olive oils, all grown and milled in California. They also provide an unparalleled selection of artisan vinegars.
Renaud’s Patisserie & Bistro 3315 State St. 805 569-2400 RenaudsBakery.com Renaud’s is a bakery specializing in French pastries and French-style cakes, as well as a bistro offering an extensive menu for lunch and dinner. Open Mon–Sat 7am–5pm; Sun 7am–3pm.
Telegraph Brewing Co. 418 N. Salsipuedes St. 805 963-5018 TelegraphBrewing.com Handcrafting unique American ales that embrace the heritage of California’s early brewing pioneers and use as many locally grown ingredients as possible. Visit the tasting room, open Tue–Thu 3–9pm; Fri–Sat 2–10pm; Sun 1–7pm. Telegraph beer is available at many restaurants and grocery stores in Santa Barbara County and throughout California.
Whole Foods Market 3761 State St. 805 837-6959 WholeFoodsMarket.com Founded in 1980 in Austin, Texas, Whole Foods Market, a leader in the natural and organic foods industry and America’s first national certified organic grocer, was named “America’s Healthiest Grocery Store” in 2008 by Health magazine.
Santa Barbara (Downtown) 805 Boba 651 Paseo Nuevo #213 805 845-5655 805Boba.com 805 Boba offers authentic Taiwanese “bubble” tea with a local twist. Featuring fresh local fruit, hand crafted syrups, tea, tapioca pearls and many other options, 805 Boba strives to provide the best quality slushes, smoothies, and tea in Santa Barbara. Ask about their Farmers Market Edition boba featuring seasonal produce from the Santa Barbara Farmers Market.
Alchemy Arts Café 35 W. Haley St. 805 899-8811 AlchemyWellnessSpa.com Offering a dynamic menu that evolves with the seasons, Alchemy Arts Café strives to provide more nourishment, value, grace, and excitement to your dining experience. The chefs and wellness team work in tandem to design recipes, elixirs, food and juice cleansing programs to support your health goals. Available evenings for private parties and special events. Open 9am–5pm except first Thursday of each month 9am–8pm.
American Riviera Bank 1033 Anacapa St. 805 965-5942 AmericanRivieraBank.com Offering a local and sustainable approach to banking. The founders of American Riviera Bank are a carefully selected group of successful, prominent, experienced and influential community and business leaders who understand the unique needs of the Santa Barbara community. Open Mon–Thu 8am–5pm, Fri 8am–6pm.
Au Bon Climat 813 Anacapa St. 805 963-7999 AuBonClimat.com The tasting room and the Jim Clendenen Wine Library is known for world class Chardonnays and Pinots, Jim Clendenen has been making wines of vision and character for over 30 years, along with other varietals. Amazing lineup of current releases and library wines available. Open noon–6pm daily.
Backyard Bowls 331 Motor Way 805 845-5379 BackyardBowls.com Santa Barbara’s most innovative breakfast and lunch spot featuring Acai Bowls and smoothies. They also offer oatmeal, yogurt and more.
Barbareño 205 W. Canon Perdido 805 963-9591 Barbareno.com Offering a casual approach to the classic California tavern, highlighting the traditions and specialties of the Central Coast and its many outstanding purveyors. Sit inside and enjoy the enticing atmosphere of an open kitchen, or outside on the patio alongside the Santa Maria grill. Bar menu available Mon–Fri 5–6:30pm, dinner nightly 5:30–9:30pm.
The Blue Owl 5 W. Canon Perdido 805 705-0991 TheBlueOwlSantaBarbara.com Nestled in the heart of Santa Barbara's downtown district, the Owl serves farmers market driven and asian-inspired dishes, sandwiches on house made breads and seasonal salads. Tue–Fri 11am–3pm, Sat 10am–3pm, and open late Fri–Sat 8pm–2:30am.
Bouchon 9 W. Victoria St. 805 730-1160 BouchonSantaBarbara.com Bouchon sources all of its ingredients using an “asfresh-and-as-local-as-possible” approach. Experience fine dining, excellent regional wines and relaxed service in a warm, inviting ambience. Private dining
Destination Maps 3.22 Miles From Hwy 101
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20. The Wine Cask, Au Bon Climat, Margerum Wines 21. Nectar Eatery & Lounge 22. McConnell’s Fine Ice Creams 23. Maudet’s 24. Telegraph Brewing Co. 25. Renaud’s, Loreto Plaza 26. Il Fustino 27. Whole Foods 28. Backyard Bowls, La Cumbre 29. MesaVerde Restaurant 30. Lazy Acres
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Santa Barbara 1. Municipal Winemakers 2. Riverbench Winery 3. The Lark Santa Barbara 4. Reds Bar and Tapas 5. Backyard Bowls, Downtown SB 6. Chocolate Maya 7. Alchemy Arts Café 8. Grapeseed Co. 9. 805 Boba 10. Barbareño 11. Scarlett Begonia 12. Bouchon Santa Barbara 13. SB Public Market , Il Fustino 14. Renaud’s, Arlington Plaza 15. Ca’ Dario Pizzeria 16. Sama Sama 17. Isabella Gourmet Foods, Cebada Vineyards Tasting Room 18. American Riviera Bank 19. C’est Cheese
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in the Cork Room is available for groups of 10–20. Dinner nightly 5–10pm.
C’est Cheese
California. They also provide an unparalleled selection of artisan vinegars.
Isabella Gourmet Foods
825 Santa Barbara St. 805 965-0318 CestCheese.com
5 E. Figueroa St. 805 585-5257 IsabellaGourmetFoods.com
In addition to being a local source for the finest cheeses and artisanal foods, C’est Cheese serves breakfast and lunch—fresh salads, soups, sandwiches and incredible pastries. Open Mon–Sat 7am–6pm; Sun 8am–3pm.
A boutique artisan grocery combining the downhome charm of an East Coast general store with an upscale West Coast setting and featuring locally made small-batch foods. Open Mon–Fri 9am–6pm; Sat 10am–6pm; Sun 11am–5pm.
Ca’ Dario Pizzeria
Margerum Wine Company
Sama Sama Kitchen 1208 State St. 805 965-4566 SamaSamaKitchen.com Sama Sama creates meals inspired by Indonesian food and local farms and markets. Their food and cocktail menu is constantly changing depending on the availability from local sources. They are locally owned and operated and part of the Shelter Social Club family. Dinner Sun–Thu 5–10pm; Fri–Sat 5–11pm. Happy Hour Mon–Fri 5–7pm.
Scarlett Begonia
29 E. Victoria St. 805 957-2020 CaDarioPizza.net
813 Anacapa St. 805 845-8435 MargerumWineCompany.com
11 W. Victoria St., #10 805 770-2143 ScarlettBegonia.net
Located just steps away from Chef Dario Furlati’s flagship eatery, Ca’ Dario Pizzeria offers a casual, urban atmosphere to enjoy authentic pizzas, salads and appetizers. The 30-seat restaurant boasts a welcoming bar, perfect for enjoying local or Italian beers on tap. Open for lunch Mon–Sat 11:30am–2:30pm; dinner Mon–Sun 5–9:30pm.
Committed to creating handcrafted wines using only the highest-quality grapes to make wines that are indicative of the place where they are grown. Two tasting rooms located in the historic El Paseo complex: Margerum Tasting Room and MWC32, which features reserve and limited production wines. Open daily noon–6pm with the last tasting at 5:30pm.
Scarlett Begonia will always strive to have interesting, thoughtful food. Menus change weekly with an innovative, fresh approach to breakfast, lunch and dinner. Showcasing progressive modern cuisine, Scarlett Begonia features sustainable, organic, high quality ingredients coupled with innovative cooking to provide one of the most food-centric experiences in Santa Barbara. Open for dinner and cocktail hour Tue– Sat 4–9pm, breakfast and lunch Tue–Sun 9am–2pm.
Cebada Vineyard & Winery 5 E. Figueroa St. 805 735-4648 CebadaWine.com Cebada vinifies estate-grown Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. This boutique winery produces sophisticated Burgundian style wines. Enjoy their hand-crafted vertical wine tasting in La Arcada Plaza.
Chocolate Maya 15 W. Gutierrez St. 805 965-5956 ChocolateMaya.com Chocolate Maya scours the world for pure, luscious chocolates and offers incredible savory bars, truffles, bonbons and gift baskets as well as a wide choice of organic and fair-trade chocolate products. Mon–Fri 10am–6pm; Sat 10am–5pm; Sun 10am–4pm.
Cielito Restaurant 1114 State St. 805 965-4770 CielitoRestaurant.com A Santa Barbara take on the flavors of Latin America and Mexico, featuring the freshest and most sustainable of Central Coast ingredients, over 90 tequilas, with enticing libations and innovative cocktails, in addition to an impressive selection of mezcal and exciting local spirits. Latin American inspired, Santa Barbara realized. Weekend Brunch. Happy Hour. Dinner.
Grapeseed Company 21 W. Ortega St. 805 456-3655 TheGrapeseedCompany.com The Grapeseed Company creates botanical spa and skin care products handcrafted from the byproduct of wine plus antioxidant-rich local and organic ingredients. Open Mon–Fri 10:30am–6pm; Sat 10–5pm; closed Sun.
Il Fustino 308 W. Victoria 805 845-4995 ilFustino.com Il Fustino is Santa Barbara’s first and finest olive oil and vinegar tasting room. Il Fustino purveys only the finest and freshest olive oils, all grown and milled in
McConnell’s Fine Ice Creams 728 State St. 805 324-4402 McConnells.com McConnell’s Fine Ice Creams, founded in Santa Barbara in 1949, is now in its third generation of family ownership. They make their ice creams as they always have: from scratch, using Central Coast, grass-grazed milk, cream and the finest local, sustainable and organic ingredients from partner farms, artisans and purveyors they’ve worked with for decades. No preservatives. No stabilizers. No additives. Ever. A 70-year, sweet legacy of keeping it real.
Nectar Eatery & Lounge 20 E. Cota St. 805 899-4694 NectarSB.com Offering great small plates with ethnic notes that pair beautifully with local wines and fine cocktails. Enjoy special items on Meatless Mondays, Tequila Tuesdays and Wine Wednesdays along with their regular menu. Host your private party in the romantic lounge upstairs. Open 5–10pm for dinner; drinks until 2am.
Renaud’s Patisserie & Bistro
The Wine Cask 813 Anacapa St. 805 966-9463 WineCask.com The Wine Cask Restaurant features the freshest local ingredients, the best wine list in town and seasonal signature cocktails. They offer fine dining in their exquisite Gold Room and casual dining in the courtyard and at their Intermezzo bar. Lunch: Tue–Fri 11:30am–3pm. Dinner: Tue–Sun from 5:30pm. Last seating at 9pm Sun–Thu and at 10pm Fri–Sat.
Santa Barbara (Mesa) Lazy Acres 302 Meigs Rd. 805 564-4410 LazyAcres.com Santa Barbara’s best source for wholesome, natural and organic foods and products with real people dedicated to providing unmatched personal service. Mon–Sat 7am–11pm; Sun 7am–10pm.
MESAVERDE
1324 State St. 805 892-2800 RenaudsBakery.com
1919 Cliff Dr. 805 963-4474 MesaverdeRestaurant.com
Renaud’s is a bakery specializing in French pastries and French-style cakes, as well as a bistro offering an extensive menu for breakfast and lunch. Open Mon–Sat 7am–5pm, Sun 7am–3pm.
MESAVERDE, a plant-based restaurant in Santa Barbara, fuses Mediterranean flavors and fresh ingredients to establish a taste reaching beyond simple expectations. They offer locally sourced produce and raw vegan desserts. House-made kombucha, cold-pressed juices and almond milk are made daily.
Riverbench Vineyard & Winery 137 Anacapa St., Suite C 805 324-4100 Riverbench.com Established in 1973, when the first Chardonnay and Pinot Noir grapes were planted on the property. For years since then, some of the most renowned wineries have purchased Riverbench fruit for their wines. In 2004, Riverbench began producing their own wines in limited quantities, with many available exclusively through their tasting rooms in Santa Maria and Santa Barbara. Open 11am–6pm daily.
Santa Maria Cambria Estate Winery 5475 Chardonnay Ln. 805 938-7318 CambriaWines.com Family-owned, sustainably-farmed, estate winery. Visit and experience the flavors of the Santa Maria Bench. Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Pinot Gris, Viognier and Syrah. Open daily 10am–5pm.
EdibleSantaBarbara.com SPRING 2016 | 75
Foxen Vineyard & Winery 7200 and 7600 Foxen Canyon Rd. 805 937-4251 FoxenVineyard.com The Foxen Boys’ winery and tasting room features Burgundian and Rhône-style wines. Visit the historic shack “Foxen 7200” for Italian and Bordeaux-style wines. Picnic tables and scenic views at both locations. Open 11am–4pm daily.
Presqu’ile Winery Serving grassfed beef directly to customers since 1991
RESERVE YOUR Portion Today at:
MorrisGrassfed.com
5391 Presquile Dr. 805 937-8110 PresquileWine.com Presqu’ile is a small, family-run winery dedicated to making exceptional cool-climate Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc. Situated on a hilltop, with ocean and vineyard views, Presqu'ile offers one of the most sunning and memorable Central Coast wine tasting experiences. Open Sat–Tue 11am–5pm, Fri 11am–6pm.
Riverbench Vineyard & Winery 6020 Foxen Canyon Rd. 805 937-8340 Riverbench.com
eat. drink. read. think.
Established in 1973, when the first Chardonnay and Pinot Noir grapes were planted on the property. For years since then, some of the most renowned wineries have purchased Riverbench fruit for their wines. In 2004, Riverbench began producing their own wines in limited quantities, with many available exclusively through their tasting rooms in Santa Maria and Santa Barbara. Open 10am–4pm daily.
Santa Ynez ISSUE 29 • SPRING 2016
Rancho Olivos 2390 Refugio Rd. 805 686-9653 RanchoOlivos.com Located in beautiful Santa Ynez, Rancho Olivos creates distinctively fresh artisan extra-virgin olive oils from their sustainably grown Italian and Spanish varietals of olives. Open for olive oil tasting daily noon–4pm.
Santa Ynez Valley Cheese Company Building
Food
Communities The Tiny Mess A Big Taste of a Small Town No Cider House Rules E AT • D R I N K • R E A D • T H I N K
WE DELIVER… Subscribe Online Today EdibleSantaBarbara.com For more information email us at info@EdibleSantaBarbara.com
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1095 Meadowvale Rd. 805 691-9448 SantaYnezValleyCheeseCompany.com Your valley source for cut-to-order imported and domestic cheese and charcuterie as well as gourmet products and fresh bread. We prepare boards, platters and take-away picnic trays for caterers, wineries and consumers. Open Mon, Wed–Sat, 10am–5pm and Sun noon–4 pm (closed Tue).
SY Kitchen 1110 Faraday St. 805 691-9794 SYKitchen.com Modern Northern Italian dishes showcasing local ingredients in an inviting farmhouse in the heart of Santa Ynez. Chef Luca Crestanelli's specialties include home-made pastas; wood-fired pizzas, and oak-grilled chicken, lamb chops and steak. Dazzling cocktails are crafted by Alberto Battaglini. Dinner nightly from 5pm; lunch Wed–Sat 11:30am–2:30pm; Italian Breakfast Sun 10am–2pm.
Solvang Buttonwood Farm Winery 1500 Alamo Pintado Rd. 805 688-3032 ButtonwoodWinery.com In 1968 Betty Williams came to Buttonwood, creating a life that found expression through a connection with the land. The vineyard now has 33,000 vines with a mix of Sauvignon Blanc, Semillon, Marsanne, Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Syrah. Tasting room open daily 11am–5pm.
First & Oak 409 1st St., Solvang, 93463 805 688-1703 FirstAndOak.com Local, sustainable, organic. Offering an array of complex plates emphasizing flavor and finesse. California eclectic, utilizing French technique and inspiration from world travels. The seasonal plates are designed for creating your own tasting menu, paired with a handselected sommelier’s wine list.
Lincourt Vineyards 1711 Alamo Pintado Rd. 805 688-8554 LincourtWines.com Lincourt Vineyard is the perfect stop for a picnic in wine country. Stop by our tasting room to sample our estate grown Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, Gruner Veltliner, Sauvignon Blanc, and Chardonnay open daily 10am–5pm.
Succulent Café Wine Charcuterie 1555 Mission Dr. 805 691-9444 SucculentCafe.com Comfort food with a twist, prepared with seasonal and local, farm fresh ingredients. The best charcuterie plates around feature farm fresh cheeses, house-made jams, pickled veggies, nuts and fruit. Great local wine, craft beer and signature cocktails. Breakfast/Lunch: weekdays (except Tues) 10am–3pm, Sat & Sun 8:30am–3pm. Dinner: Wed–Mon 5–9pm.
Summerland Summerland Winery 2330 Lillie Ave. 805 565-9463 SummerlandWine.com Founded in 2002, a boutique winery dedicated to the production of fine wines from the Central Coast of California. Focused on Pinot Noir and Chardonnay varietals, the winemaker also dabbles in expressive Rhône and Bordeaux iterations. An inviting, relaxed atmosphere in the seaside village of Summerland, California. Open 11am–6pm, Fri until 9pm.
Source Guide Bragg Live Food Products Bragg.com Founded in 1912 by Dr. Paul C. Bragg and now run by his daughter Dr. Patricia Bragg in Goleta, Bragg Live Food Products offers organic and natural health products and publishes self-health books. Available locally at Fairview Gardens’ Farm Stand, Lassen’s, Gladden and Sons, Tri-County Produce, Whole Foods Market, Lazy Acres and in the health section of your neighborhood grocery store.
Dave’s Garage 650 Easy St. Simi Valley 805 306-1174 DavesGarage-HotRodShop.com Mentored by one of the finest car builders and designers in the business, Dave specializes in classic restorations, complete custom builds, fabrication, modifications and collision repairs of pre-1975 vehicles. Dave’s Garage recently moved into a new 8,000 square foot shop and showroom with products for do-it-yourselfers.
Dolce 805 260-7177 Personal chef, catering and dessert by Ashley Gheno.
Drake Family Farms DrakeFamilyFarms.com Making locally produced farmstead artisan goat cheese in Ontario, California. At Drake Family Farms every goat has a name and their goat cheeses are made on the farm with milk exclusively from the farm’s own animals. Available at local farmers markets and online.
The Food Archivist 805 234-3069 Facebook.com/TheFoodArchivist The Food Archivist is a multimedia recipe document that celebrates the family foodie experience by preserving family recipes through interviews, photography and video. Preserve the recipes you have come to love and celebrate and honor the loved ones who have touched your life and cooked your favorite recipes all these years. Pass the recipe, please!
Giffin & Crane General Contractors 805 966-6401 GiffinAndCrane.com
Hollandia Produce 805 684-4146 LiveGourmet.com GrowerPetes.com Hollandia Produce is a family owned and operated agricultural business specializing in hydroponically greenhouse grown vegetables. Located in Carpinteria, California, the company grows, ships and distributes its certified organic label Grower Pete’s, and its Live Gourmet line of products, which are harvested with their roots intact to preserve freshness.
Jimenez Family Farm 805 688-0597 JimenezFamilyFarm.com Small family-run local farm specializes in sustainably grown food and their famous handmade pies, quiches and small batch preserves. Visit them at the farmers market to purchase produce, pies, jams and naturally fed and farm-raised rabbit, lamb, pork, goat and poultry.
Morris Grassfed 831 623-2933 MorrisGrassfed.com Providing 100% grassfed and finished beef to customers throughout California. Processed in USDA inspected facilities , cut and wrapped by small-scale artisan butchers and delivered directly at pre-arranged delivery locations throughout the year. Family owned, they practice holistic management on the rangelands they manage.
“Where Every Goat Has a Name” Farmstead Artisan Goat Cheese Locally produced on the farm with milk exclusively from the farm’s own animals. Available at local farmers markets and online.
DrakeFamilyFarms.com
(909) 947-8688
805-344-2852 REMEMBERTHEALAMOMOTEL.COM
Niman Ranch
11990 Grant St. Northglenn, CO 80233 NimanRanch.com Niman Ranch is committed to providing the finest tasting humanely and sustainably raised pork, beef and lamb raised by independent family farmers and ranchers. No antibiotics—ever, no added hormones— ever, all vegetarian feeds and raised outdoors or in deeply bedded pens.
Santa Barbara Certified Farmers Market 805 962-5354 SBFarmersMarket.org Seven markets, six days a week. See schedule on page 56.
S H E L T E R S O C I A L C L U B FA M I L Y OJAI RANCHO INN / SAMA SAMA KITCHEN C H I E F ’ S P E A K B A R / A G AV E I N N / H A M L E T I N N
Valle Fresh 805 865-2282 ValleFresh.com
At Giffin & Crane General Contractors, Inc., each project is unique, whether it’s a simple remodel or an extraordinary architectural estate. Working closely with their clients to fulfill their clients’ dreams, they are committed to providing the best workmanship, on time and in budget.
Specializing in hand-crafted, genuine food sourced from local farms, ranches and artisans, Valle Fresh is a family owned catering company that has a zeal for the food and services we provide. Chef Conrad Gonzales offers personalized menus for all occasions including weddings, pop-up events, food and wine pairings, themed dinners, gourmet taco bars and more.
Harvest Santa Barbara
Winfield Farm
805 696-6930 HarvestSantaBarbara.com
805 686-9312 WinfieldFarm.us
Delivering freshly harvested wholesale produce— sourced directly from local family farms to schools, restaurants, hospitals and retail businesses. Their mission is to be the catalyst for a healthier, more sustainable food system by strengthening the ties between farmers and the community.
Taste the magic of Winfield Mangalitsa pork. Visit us at the SB Food and Wine Weekend Neighborhood Tasting @ BACARA on April 17. You can also order online via our Mangalitsa Market when you visit the Winfield Farm website. Like us on Facebook (WinfieldFarmBuellton), follow us on Twitter (@WinfieldFarmUS) and see us on Instagram (Winfield_Farm).
Yogi Tea YogiProducts.com Founded in 1969 by Yogi Bhajan, Yogi Tea has over 60 tea blends featuring traditional Ayurvedic spices.
Tecolote Book Shop Since 1925
1470 eaSt Valley rOad upper VillaGe Of MOntecitO
805 969-4977 Gift WrappinG • ShippinG • Special OrderS BOOk SearcheS • authOr appearanceS EdibleSantaBarbara.com SPRING 2016 | 77
Steep a cup of Yogi tea and you have something more than delicious. Every intriguing blend of herbs and botanicals is on a mission, supporting energy, stamina, clarity, immunity, tranquility, cleansing or unwinding.
®,©2015-2016 East West Tea Company, LLC
Every cup is a gift to mind, body and spirit.
®
EdibleSantaBarbara.com SPRING 2016 | 79
The Last Bite Spring’s Don’t-Miss Dish by Liz Dodder
Spring Farro Bowl at Plenty on Bell
Plenty on Bell is the latest addition to the Los Alamos dining scene. Although not affiliated with Edible Santa Barbara, it is a distant relative of Edible magazines. Co-founders of Edible Communities Tracey Ryder and Carole Topalian opened their modest farm-to-table eatery in January, now serving lunch every day.
LIZ DODDER
At the helm is long-time Los Alamos chef Jesper Johansson, who has cooked on this street for 16 years. A native of Sweden, he’s gained a large local following with his downto-earth dishes and scrumptious breakfasts. Bowls are a signature dish, featuring weekly and seasonal specials and vegan options with around-the-world flavors like white beans and sausage, mussels and frites or Italian pastas. This Spring Farro Bowl features tender spring vegetables and locally grown farro from Kandarian Organic Farms. An ancestor of modern wheat, emmer farro is a heritage grain that’s nutrient-dense, GMO-free, nutty and chewy. And it’s 100% organic.
80 | EDIBLE SANTA BARBARA SPRING 2016
Johansson first rinses the farro, then puts about a cup in 2 cups of water with a pinch of salt and cooks it for about 20 minutes. It should double in size and be al dente when it’s ready. Meanwhile, he blanches the peas and asparagus for about a minute, then transfers to an ice bath. He chops or thinly slices the asparagus, carrots, leeks, radishes, spinach, mint and parsley. To make the dressing, Johansson puts sherry vinegar, a mix of whole-grain and Dijon mustard, lemon, olive oil and salt and pepper in a small jar and shakes it to combine. He then mixes all ingredients together and tops with fresh herbs to serve—grated cheese or harissa would also work. Liz Dodder is a drinker, eater and traveler who has eaten five kinds of foie gras in one day. She’s also a blogger, writer, photographer, recipe developer, web designer, social media maven and Certified Specialist of Wine (CSW). CaliCoastWineCountry.com
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You Will Love Bragg Healthy Vegetarian Foods:
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Bragg Organic Apple Cider Vinegar and ACV & Honey Blend Bragg Delicious Apple Cider Vinegar Drinks Bragg Liquid Aminos - All Purpose Seasoning Bragg Organic Extra Virgin First Cold Pressed Olive Oil Bragg Sprinkle (2 Herbs & Spices) Seasoning
You’ll love all 7 BRAGG® ACV Energy Drinks!
®
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Bragg Delicious Salad Dressings & Marinades Bragg Sea Kelp Delight Seasoning Bragg Nutritional Yeast Seasoning
Organic Dressings & Marinades in 12oz Glass
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