A Tale of Two Sacramento Restaurants

I wanted to blog about two restaurants I have visited lately. We have been trying to eat at home lately, so going out feels like a genuine treat and we choose our destinations carefully. The first stop was the new location of Bacon & Butter, which moved from midtown to Tahoe Park.

 We really liked the modern industrial look to the interior of the restaurant. 

 

I'm currently on a break from sugar, which prevented me from ordering the baked goods listed on the whiteboard pictured below. But it wouldn't have mattered anyway- they were already sold out by the time we showed up for lunch! They have been doing a brisk business since re-opening and were already sold out of several menu items as well.

 

 

It being lunch, I went for the burger, which was amazing, topped with greens, crispy onions, jack cheese and quality bacon. It also came with a thoughtful, fall-inspired salad featuring local produce.

 

Our friends went a more traditional route with Pear-Pecan French Toast (made with gorgeous, fluffy bread) and a fall-produce stuffed omelette served with one gorgeous autumny fruit salad.  

 

Conclusion: If you haven't been to the new location yet, check it out. Come early if you want the baked goods and full menu selection, but be prepared for lines if you come during peak hours.

Moving on, our next stop was The Cultured & The Cured, a real fromagerie and charcuterie. In other words, all they sell here is cheese, cured meats, and other bits that go well with them! We came here for lunch to try their menu of cheese-oriented offerings.

 

 

First, the cheese! They have an impressive selection for such a small shop.

 

Next, the cured meats and extras:

 

They also have some baked goods that were calling to me...

 

And some really fun, unique finds to compliment your cheese boards:

 

We deliberated over the menu and finally choose two sandwiches and a cheese board. The cheese boards are ordered by category (cow milk, sheep milk, goat milk, washed rind, blue) and come with a few tasteful additions besides toast crisps. Our selection was the Monger's Choice and included cow milk and goat milk cheddars, and both a mild and a strong blue.It was a lovely selection, and I would love to return and try them all!

 

I didn't remember to take a picture of my sandwich until my side salad was gone and I was halfway done, but it was a toasted panini filled with turkey, cheese, and Hungarian peppers for a little heat. So, so good.

 

Conclusion: Run, don't walk, here if you consider yourself a cheese connoisseur. 

My Class at Jamie Oliver's Big Rig Kitchen

After watching the television program "Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution" back in June of 2011, I wrote this evaluation of local school lunches. Then one day last month, I was reading the newspaper published by the Sacramento Natural Foods Co-Op and saw a blurb that made my heart jump. Jamie Oliver's Big Rig Kitchen, it said, was doing a tour of California cities and would be stopping in Sacramento in January and February. As a long-time fan of the chef and fan of the Food Revolution, I knew I had to sign up for a class.

 

The Big Rig Kitchen is a mobile kitchen that has been offering free classes as it has made its way through our great state, thanks to donations from the places listed below (on the side of the truck). I hopped onto the website and saw all sorts of free cooking classes being offered, with menus including fish, Mexican and Italian fare, and the one I ended up signing up for - "Fast Food Now", featuring barbecued chicken.   

 

I arrived for my class at 5:30pm on a Friday night, pulling into the parking lot of Sacramento High school, the same fortunate school that recently enjoyed a visit from Alice Waters to their edible school garden. After a few minutes of waiting outside the closed door of the Big Rig, the door opened and I was welcomed in to don a name tag and a white apron.

At the front of the mobile kitchen was a demonstration area where Everett, our demo chef, showed us the ropes. After the demo, we washed our hands and retreated to one of the three kitchen stations where we would try our best to replicate what we had just seen.

 

Our kitchen stations were well-stocked with the necessary ingredients, donated mostly by the Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op just down the street. (Thanks, Co-op!) Everything was ready for us to attempt to make a homemade BBQ sauce, a French-style vinaigrette dressing, and oven-baked Potato Wedges.

 

In addition to the ingredients, our kitchen station also came with a local food expert to assist us as needed. Joe helped oversee our group of four as each of us tackled one of the elements of our final meal. He was quiet at first, but once it came out that he was a certified BBQ judge, he was brimming with stories of his travels and experiences. That weekend, he confided, he was headed down to Brentwood, CA for a rib competition. A lucky man, that Joe!

 

 

With a little help from Joe, our group completed the meal in a surprisingly short amount of time - the whole meal took us maybe 20 minutes to prepare from start to finish.(To speed up the baking time on the Potato Wedges, we sliced them super-thin instead of cutting them into chunky wedges.) 

The meal we enjoyed together at the end was both healthy and tasty, and just the kind of informal, kid-friendly meal that families should be sharing nightly. If you can't spot the purple potato slices on the plate, it might be because they are camouflaged against the mixed greens!

As I ate my meal, I imagined Jamie Oliver explaining that instead of chicken nuggets every night, parents might see what their kids say to this homemade barbecued chicken. Instead of French fries, see what the kids think of the Potato Wedges. And of course, the salad was made delicious by the homemade dressing, which contained no added sugar (unlike most commercial bottled dressings). It could truly be a revolutionary meal. Our community is so fortunate to have the chance to attend free classes like these!

My one disappointment (besides, of course, the absence of the celebrity chef himself) was a difference I noted between the cooking classes portrayed on the television show and the class I attended. On the show, all of the participants were required to make a pledge to share the knowledge they gained, by teaching at least one other person how to prepare the dishes they learned to make in the class. In this way, the Food Revolution could spread throughout the community. 

In the class I took, we were not required to make such a pledge. But I still want to do my part to help the Revolution spread, by sharing the recipes from the class I took. Viva la revolution!

French Dressing:

1/4 of a clove of garlic

1 teaspoon of Dijon mustard

2 tablespoons of white or red wine vinegar

1/3 cup of extra virgin olive oil

Peel and finely chop the garlic. Put the garlic, mustard, vinegar and olive oil into a glass jar with a pinch of salt and pepper. Put the lid on the gar and shake well.

Potato Wedges (serves 4):

1/4 tsp. sea salt

freshly ground black pepper, to taste

2 medium (about 10 ounces) baking potatoes

1 tablespoon olive oil

Preheat your oven to 400F. Scrub the potatoes clean and get rid of any gnarly bits. Cut the potatoes into chunk wedges (about 6 per potato). Transfer to a roasting tray and add a good lug of olive oil and salt and pepper. Toss together so all the wedges are coated in the oil, then spread out in one layer, skin-side down.

Cook in the hot oven for 25-30 minutes or until golden, crisp and cooked through. To tell if they're cooked, poke one or two with the tip of a paring knife- you should meet no resistance.

Barbecued Chicken (Serves 4):

1 orange 

1 dried chile

1 1/2 heaped teaspoons smoked paprika

1 1/2 teaspoons Dijon or English mustard

3 tablespoons honey

3 tablespoons ketchup

1 teaspoon olive oil

1/16 teaspoon sea salt and

freshly ground pepper

4 x 5-ounce boneless skinless chicken breasts

If you're barbecuing, light the grill now so the flames have died down and it's ready when you're ready to cook.

Finely grate the orange zest into a shallow bowl. Crumble in the dried chile. Add the paprika, mustard, honey, ketchup, and a splash of olive oil. Season with a small pinch each of the salt and pepper and mix well. Spoon out a few tablespoons of the marinade and set it aside.

Add the chicken breasts to the bowl with the remaining marinade. Turn them over in the marinade so they're well coated, cover with plastic wrap and leave to sit for 5 to 10 minutes or until the grill is ready.

If using a grill pan, put it over high heat now to get it screaming hot.

Use tongs to transfer your chicken breasts onto the grill or grill pan. For chicken breasts about 1 inch thick, cook for about 5 minutes on each side, turning every minute and basting as you go, or until golden and cooked through. Spoon a little of the reserved sauce over each breast.

Dine Downtown Week: Dinner at Mulvaney's

I'm slowly working my way towards all of the Sacramento restaurants that have received the Slow Food "Snail of Approval". Last week, I noticed that one of the restaurants I've wanted to try for years, Mulvaney's B&L, had a great-sounding prix fixe menu posted for Dine Downtown week. Three courses for $30 sounded like an opportunity I couldn't pass up.

Chef Patrick Mulvaney is heavily involved in the Slow Food scene and is famous for turning whatever comes through the door from local farms that day into dinner that night. Because of the nature of his farm-to-table practices, diners normally don't find out what they will be eating that night until they are handed a dinner menu (although for this week, the same prix fixe menu was offered every night).

The restaurant is housed in a historic firehouse downtown, and the signage is so subtle I could have walked right by it if I wasn't paying attention.

Sometimes the little things make a big difference as far as dining ambiance go. You know it's a nice restaurant when the water and salt/pepper look like this:

The bread and butter sure were pretty to look at. I believe this is pink Himalayan salt sprinkled over butter with a crusty bread on the side.

The amuse bouche was a lamb and pork sausage topped with a spicy sofrito. These flavors were so good, I rather wished to take a whole sausage and the sofrito topping on a nice roll and call it lunch one day.

My salad was an ever-so-slightly bitter frisee salad dressed in a nice vinaigrette, served along side a Wood Ear Mushroom Scaccia. This is a warm Italian tomato and cheese pie, although here it seemed more like a roll with the mushroom in the center. The sauce had a surprising kick to it and I loved the combination of slightly bitter greens with spicy and savory scaccia.

This was NOT my dish - it was my husband's. He opted for a 28-day aged ribeye steak topped with bacon butter (yes, bacon and butter, together) and served with broccoli raabe and carrots. He said it topped the steak at Ruth's Chris and that this will be his new standard for steaks. Clearly, he was a big fan.

Here was my entree - fettuccine with arugula rapini,  fennel sausage, roasted Hatch chile, and Pecorino Romano. The homemade noodles, silky and cooked perfectly, were dressed in a light cream sauce, and all of the flavors of this dish came together beautifully. It was one gorgeous winter pasta dish.

My meal included dessert, a Mexican chocolate bread pudding topped with salted caramel sauce. I can honestly say that I came close to licking every plate clean this evening, this one included.

As we finished our meal, the bill came in a vintage book that we were invited to sign. The comments left by other diners were charming remnants of pleasant dinner conversation, good company, and excellent meals. Ours: "Thanks for a memorable meal, Mulvaney's! Can't wait to come back."

Dickens Fair and Russian Food

I haven't posted in some time for a variety of reasons. Reason #1: the first trimester of my first pregnancy hit me hard and I slept during most of my free time for October-December.

Reason #2: I was so thrilled to post on my trip to the Dicken's Fair in late December, only to find out that the Blogger Ap was less than efficient at importing the numerous pictures I took from my cell phone. I spent about an hour trying to make it work and then became so discouraged that I had to take a break from blogging in order to re-group.

Now it is early January, and I wanted to share just one picture from the amazing Dicken's Fair. This San Francisco Bay-area event is held every year during the holidays and constitutes a sort of Disneyland for book lovers. My husband smiled as I wandered around in awe, saying things like, "Look, there's Ebenezer Scrooge and a shackled Jacob Marley!... A Christmas ball with waltzing lessons!...Ooh, roasted chestnuts and Cornish pasties!... Look, an antique bookseller, and there's a shop selling real corsets!" (At over $200, I don't think I'll be lacing one up anytime soon, not to mention they aren't too maternity-friendly.)

In this picture, actors depict Christmastime at the Dickens' family's home, complete with roast goose dinner on the table and a cozy gathering in the parlor:

We loved the Fair so much, we can't wait to return next year. Mark that one off my list of activities to accomplish this year!

Another item that I checked off my "30 before 30" list relates to the goal of trying 3 new kinds of food. I'm a fairly adventurous diner, so I had to think hard on this one. One of my ideas involving a venture into Russian/Ukrainian food as found at the local restaurant Firebird. They serve a plentiful lunch buffet, where I started with a chunky, hot bowl of borscht topped with cream sour cream, then moved on to an overwhelming array of hot foods and cold salads. I walked away from Buffet Round One with the following heaping plate:

Lunch at Biba

If you are ever in Sacramento and love authentic Italian cooking, or need an elegant place to enjoy a meal, you may want to check out Biba. The owner, Biba Caggiano, has written cookbooks on Italian cooking and is a local food celebrity. Her restaurant recently got a facelift, and my husband and I headed over for one afternoon last week to celebrate his birthday and check out the lunch menu at the remodeled location.

We went on a Friday. This is a very important detail, because Biba's most famous dish of all is her lasagna, which is made only on Thursdays and Fridays. This masterpiece consists of ten layers of spinach noodles, intertwined with Bolognese meat ragu and creamy bechamel sauce.

The texture of this lasagna was remarkable and unique. Cutting into it with a fork and knife felt like slicing cleanly through delicate tissue paper. Although these two squares don't seem overwhelming at first glance, the taste was very rich, and I was unable to finish more than half of my plate at one sitting. Leftovers, however, tasted just as good the next day!

Part of my reduced appetite was due to an appetizer that my husband ordered - mozzarella topped with roasted peppers, arugula, and olive oil.

 

Again, the texture was amazing in this dish. The skin around the edge of the ball of mozzarella was firm, but the center of it was soft and creamy. I totally dig that textural contrast - I mean, I'm the kind of girl who actually enjoys eating the skin that forms on the top of pudding. (Oops, did I just admit that? Here's my foodie card.) The bold, peppery olive oil stood out, and the whole salad felt indulgent and cohesive.

We were lucky enough to get a Groupon for Biba, but it is always a pleasure to visit. And now, having tried her famous lasagna and "real" mozarella cheese, I feel almost as if I had been to Italy in an afternoon.

Sacramento Food Film Festival

"Wait, Sacramento is having a Food Film Festival?" I thought in amazement. Discovering this event felt like someone designed and custom tailored a city-wide event according to my own personal interests. Even better, it meant that these issues were of interest not just to me, but to a much larger local community.

So today, off I went to the Guild Theater (pictured above) for a morning full of educational documentaries on the US food system. You might be thinking that this could put you to sleep, but in reality, it is a universal subject that affects each and every human being in our country, because seriously: we all need to eat. What we choose to eat and how speaks volumes about our values.

The three films I viewed were all awesome. I saw:


* The Last Crop: This locally filmed documentary followed a local husband-and-wife team (the Mains, above) who have organically run Good Humus Farm in the Central Valley since 1976. The film focuses on their struggle to obtain a land easement that would conserve their farmland for future generations. Their criteria: The land must be farmed, organically, by farmers who live on the land.

There were lots of fun interviews done locally here at the Davis Farmer's Market and local Natural Foods Co-Ops. Most surprising to me was how little California land is being conserved for farming - shocking, considering how much of the world our state provides with year-round produce!


* Dive: I expected this indie documentary to be another homage to the joys of "freeganism" - you know, hipsters retrieving gourmet delights from dumpsters, bemoaning our consumerism and wasteful society, eating like king's off of other people's only semi-expired meat, eggs, produce and dairy products...

I was only half right.

While the creator of the film starts off gloating over the spoils of his dumpster-diving expeditions, his perspective evolves to questioning why the still-good food isn't being donated to local charities and food banks. I learned that under the Good Samaritan Food Donation Act passed by Bill Clinton, grocery stores are protected from being sued for giving away their excess food to non-profits.

Yet many stores remain overly conservative, only giving away bread and dry goods while valuable fresh goods spoil in dumpsters. The film director hopes to foster ties between grocery stores and the truly needy of society so that the 30 million tons of wasted food our country produces each year can go to a better use than sitting in landfills.


* Lunch Line: This film sought to understand our school lunch system: where it came from (the government's desire to use excess food during the Great Depression), how it changed over the years (it became free to all but received no additional funding), and what needs to change now.

I had never stopped to think about school lunch as a form of socialism, but I learned that when it was first implemented, that's how some folks saw it and why they didn't like it. This film was entertaining and funny - the creation of the school lunch program is explained in terms of Twilight - yes, that's right, werewolves and vampires! You gotta see it to get it.

Another valuable point made that struck me is that it's one thing to jump on board the Jamie Oliver Food Revolution bandwagon and demand better school lunches, but it's another thing to find the funding to make it happen. My own school district cancelled all bus routes this week, so obviously they have significant budgetary concerns, landing school lunches near the bottom of their priority list.

A student at our local high school shared with me the following regarding his daily school lunch:

"You can get a small slice of pizza, or a smashed, nasty cheese-burger or a salad made of only iceberg lettuce. Obviously, the salad is a better choice, however, they run out before most kids even get into the line. Sure, each choice has fruits and veggies. The fruits are bruised, old, waxy and small. Oh yeah, and you only get one. The "veggies" are two or three baby carrot sticks with maybe a leaf or two of lettuce.

I have had several milks which are WAY, and I stress WAY, past due date as well. Many kids get a taco bowl for lunch which is a burnt taco bowl with super greasy, nasty meat, refried (again with the fried) beans with more iceberg lettuce and jalepenos. As a student of River City High School, I agree, they could do much, much better."

Clearly we can do better, but where is the funding going to come from? What price are we willing to pay to ensure that children (who obtain half of their calories every day at school) can be nourished? Should kids who are able to bring their own lunch from home rather than pay for rubbish? These are questions that I'll be pondering for a long time yet.

The Porch

2012. This year, we set some goals that may not be conducive to maintaining a blog, but hopefully can improve our overall quality of life. One of those goals is to limit our eating out to twice a month. For us, that's not an easy order to fill, but we don't count gift cards or meals that other treat us to (whew), so that might be the saving grace as we transition into cutting back.

Another idea I've been pondering is to live more fully in reality than in virtual reality. To play with my dog daily, write daily, knit, create something tangible whenever possible. I may not blog as much, but when I do, it will be to share something really special.

I am starting with The Porch. When my husband and I traveled to Portland (OR), we fell in love with Screen Door, an upscale Southern food mecca. When I heard that a similar restaurant was opening up in Sacramento, I knew that this would be our first meal out of the 2012, and it turned out to be a great decision.

When we first arrived at the restaurant, I immediately loved the old-fashioned sensibility of the damask curtains, refurnished antique mirrors and porch light on the facade.


From beginning to end, our food was to die for. It started with a Muffalatta spread and crostini toasts, compliments of the chef - not too salty despite the presence of capers and green olives. I actually considered spooning this tasty stuff into my mouth once the toasts were gone, but withheld in anticipation of the good things to come.

The Porch Salad had perfectly cooked, sweet, tiny beets, plus nuts, apples, and a light creamy dressing. Then came the entrees, which were anything but light - buttermilk fried chicken, biscuits, velvety mashed potatoes with chunky sausage gravy, tangy collard greens with vinegar.


My Shrimp Po Boy was a dreamy sandwich filled with bacon, avocado, crab mayonnaise, lettuce, and cornmeal-breaded shrimp. My mouth waters just remembering it! This is the best sandwich of the year for 2012 so far, and it will be hard to beat! (Last year's choice: Cuban Pork sandwich from Seattle's Paseo.)


For dessert, we had the Black Bottom Creme Brulee - the "black bottom" refers to a layer of chocolate ganache on the bottom, a welcome surprise to our mouths. Loved the blueberry sauce served with it - a great compliment to the dish.

Bottom Line: I'm recommending this place to our friends. It's a splurge for dinner, but I will be coming here for lunch as fast as I can afford it again!

SacMoFo: The Mini Burger Truck

The last time Sacramento held a mobile food festival, I completely underestimated the popularity and demand of the people. I wasn't the only one to walk away empty-handed after hours of standing in line, but I determined not to let it happen again when the trucks converged today for another "SacMoFo".

My husband and I arrived early having already studied the list of vendors and decided that darn it, we were going for the mini-burgers again! We weren't the only ones.
While my husband waited in line, I snagged us some "hors d'ouevres" - BBQ sliders from Big John's truck, with pulled pork and tri tip. They were really tasty and at $5, didn't break the bank.

The whole experience at SacMoFo was fun and boisterous. The festival was held under the freeway. Now, I must mention that this is a very poor place to find yourself if you have any paranoid tendencies. Personally, I had to keep my eyes from looking up to avoid envisioning the freeway collapsing on oblivious festival goers. But lively music and holiday donation tables kept spirits up during long waits, and more than a few people were dancing while they waited.

When at last our order came up, we split 3 mini-burgers and an order of sweet potato tots. The sweet potato tots were out of this world, served with perfectly complimentary a honey ancho sauce. We couldn't even finish them all, so there weren't even any Napoleon Dynamite moments. ("Gimme some of your tots!" "No, get your own!")


We each enjoyed the Cowbell burgers (of which we ordered 2). They came with provolone, bacon, onion strings, and house BBQ sauce. We like a saucier burger and wish there had been more BBQ sauce, but this was a fine burger.

Our favorite, however, was surely the Ninja, a burger with supernatural flavors that blew our minds. This burger consisted of Korean short ribs, topped with pea shoots, sriracha aioli, and "Asian slaw". This flavor combination melded like magic in our mouths - this is one must-try for all Sacramento folk! If you like Korean tacos, try this Korean burger for a real treat.

When we left, the lines were starting to wind around to eternity, especially for the trucks that came up from San Francisco, like Bacon Bacon and Chairman Bao. I'm not sure if those folks at the end ever got the food they wanted, but I hope this isn't our last chance to have a festival like this. All of the trucks looked great and I hope to try them all eventually. And yes, I will be early every time from now on! It worked like a charm.