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Charlie Palmer's Pigs & Pinot ~ A Healdsburg Favorite

OK, so Dish of the Week was actually Bite of the Week ~ a Proustian breakfast moment Chef served to 300 Friday night at Pigs & Pinot, Charlie Palmer’s sold-out signature food event that takes over Healdsburg in mid-March. For those of you who grew up in the age of Top Chef ad infinitum and innumerable  foodzines and foodblogs, it may be hard to believe that once upon a time the cult of the celebrity chef didn’t exist. Charlie Palmer didn’t invent the concept, but he was one of the first American chefs to draw crowds to his restaurant Aureole in NYC by sheer virtue of his talent alone.  Back then (no, I wasn't going to say "in the good old days”) reputations could only be built by reviews and word of mouth. Palmer generated a great deal of both. In the years since he has built a mini-empire of restaurants and hotels that rivals Nobu’s in size if not influence. What Nobu is to black cod (basically on the back of one recipe), Charlie is to pork (significantly, the entire animal).

I like Pigs & Pinot. It supports a number of worthy charities while functioning as it was primarily intended ~ a two day publicity venture for Palmer and Co. What I like best about it is the classy way it goes about making the connection between food and wine while strengthening a good swath of the local economy. Even as he burnishes his own brand, Palmer manages to advance a quality driven definition of the word sustainable in an age where even the best restaurants are struggling with the temptation to fudge standards in order to survive. Any week of the year around here you can throw a stick and hit a food or wine event; few of them put the whole animal in focus to the extent Pigs & Pinot does. This is a message not lost on the 500 ticket holders that flooded the Hotel Healdsburg 1 & 2 this past weekend, with reportedly double that number on a wait list every year.  The remarkable world-class selection of Pinots guests get to taste are the sizzle, but make no mistake, the meat of this event ~ literally and figuratively ~ is the whole hog.

Most of the press Palmer generates focuses on Saturday, when “celebrity” Chefs from all over the country land in Healdsburg to flex their culinary muscle. But if you live here the real fun is watching the local talent go head to head on Friday night. Though every one of these participating local Chefs will tell you it's not a competition, that they are just ‘doing their thing,’ with few exceptions each secretly hopes theirs is the best pork mouthful of the night. And why shouldn’t they?  Our Chefs are a remarkably convivial group, but the fun at these events is upping your game as you coolly hang out in the hood with guys you compete with on a daily basis. The fact that there is an abundance of talent to go with a healthy dose of competition is what makes Healdsburg a dining Mecca. That nobody cops to being competitive is just part of the charm of living in the country.

In this respect Ryan is no exception, except to the extent that his competitive drive comes more from pride, than ego. He always defers when appreciative diners  ask him to come out and meet them, and while he's forthcoming with the press he never goes in search of them either. Quite the contrary.  Yet he’ll cook a dish over and over again to get it spot on, then think about it some more before Pancho and the team are put through their paces so it's served consistently the same way, every time, for each and every diner. As chuffed as he was when he won the Top Chef competition at Taste of Sonoma two years ago, he couldn’t wait to get out of there the minute it was over. I  suspect that when (though no fault of his own) he couldn’t defend his title this year, his worry wasn’t what people would think when he didn’t show so much as missing an opportunity to go head to head again with another talented Sonoma County Chef.

Americans have a funny relationship with what is, culturally, our inherently competitive nature. Because we always seem to equate success with money (or its corollary, fame) we are congenitally guilty of making the mistake that whoever has the most marbles when the bell rings has “won.”  I’d go as far as to say that our obsession with money and fame ~ no matter how many ‘unhappy’ rich and famous people are paraded before us ~ borders on being a national illness. The mistake here, to my mind, isn’t so much that we haven’t learned money and fame can’t engender happiness (which deep down we probably know) it’s overrating the ephemeral entity of happiness in the first place. Between happiness and true satisfaction I'll take satisfaction any day of the week. Happiness is a beautiful vagrant, its perfume a scent in the air, music that lifts your heart, the touch of someone you love. All good, but for it even to exist it needs someone to blend the perfume, write the music, become the person you love. True accomplishment, whether building character or just a better mousetrap, is complex, and while luck can play a role it's not a sustaining ingredient the way a combination of passion and patience is. The satisfaction that comes from accomplishment ~ whether it brings you happiness or not ~ resides in the way something is made,  how long you spend refining an idea, how many times you paint over a figure before its heart ~ of joy or darkness ~ appears.

Until six years ago when I took on my latest career incarnation as “restaurateur,” I managed to fashion my life in such a way that whether I succeeded or failed (and I did a lot of both) it was always on my own terms.  Even as my game changed over the years, from academia to photography and journalism, ultimately to design, I mostly avoided the world’s judgment in a way that allowed me to work on the quality of what I was producing without fear an audience of strangers wouldn’t like it. Many people don’t see a problem basing their success on something that’s been copied or stolen from its original source. Maybe that's why the world is filled with such derivative crap.

But food doesn’t wait for that certain someone who understands your aesthetic to fall in love and take it home. What takes years to learn and untold hours to source and cook is consumed in the span of a few minutes. Wham, Bam, the verdict is in.  In the past if someone did not like what I created I could console myself that it "just wasn’t to their taste”, or take the time to improve it. With food every dish and every meal must suit a diners taste each and every time…. because with food the customer is always right. That Ryan knows this and works at making our food ‘right’ for every customer, yet does so in a way where he is consistently challenging himself, pushing his own creative boundaries, is remarkable to me.

As for who actually produced the best pork inspired dish last Friday, while I did not taste everything (an understatement considering how much incredible food was being offered) Dino Bugica’s (Diavolo) black sausage was about the best I’ve ever eaten. This man’s talent in all things charcuterie is a wonder.  Ari Rosen (Scopa) had the most beautifully roasted whole baby pig which, in his inimitable style, he served simply. Cyrus’ Chinese bun was perfect respite just at the moment I was suffering from serious pork fatigue. I did not taste Charlie’s dish ~ his lines were moving at a snail’s pace ~ but the burnished pork bellies turning on the spit behind him in the central courtyard looked utterly mouth-watering.

It was not until I returned to our station that I fully registered how our contribution was going over. Until that moment I hadn't put Barndiva into the competitive mix I had running in my brain, which made it all the more delightful when I saw the faces on the crowds inundating our station. This was a different set of folks than we’d had during the first hour of the evening, when everyone was moving through the rooms tasting things for the first time. While many had returned hoping for another taste, most were new faces, that all opened with the same heartwarming gambit: “I heard from everyone this was the best thing here tonight.”

Very cool, right? But the most enjoyable moment of the night was still to come. As I stood watching I was approached by a couple from San Francisco who had returned to our station for “the final bite of the night.”  I had never met them before and they had never eaten at Barndiva, though the woman  ~ dark haired, very pretty ~ said she read the journal. They were extremely knowledgeable about food ~ off to Chicago in a few weeks “just to eat ” ~ but it wasn’t their erudition on all things culinary that struck me as the conversation moved swiftly from our favorite SF haunts through greatest meals ever, to a surprisingly honest appraisal of why eating out had come to comprise “some of the best moments” of their lives.  Though they were obviously passionate about food, they weren’t precious about what they ate. While the room and the ambiance of a restaurant mattered, connecting with informed but not overbearing servers mattered a great deal more.   Though they weren’t in the business they had, through their travels, begun to understand how hard good restaurants had to work to get it right, especially when it came to sourcing. They were, in short, critical but sympathetic. Standing there in the beautiful din of Charlie’s world the possibility suddenly occurred to me that along with the age of the celebrity chef we may be entering the age of the enlightened diner, people who see their patronage as team support, as crucial to the game as the crowds in a grandstand. Dining out is a collaborative experience; diners should be honestly invested in its outcome. Because it's true, progressive diners ~ like the best fans ~ are  the first ones to tell you when you make a bad play (or dish) but it's their cheers, when they come, that are the ones you most long to hear.

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Winter Fruit Salad

Dish of the Week:

Bright jewel colors in the dead of winter are nothing short of magical and Chef Ryan's Winter Fruit Salad with Honeycomb is a case in point.  Check it out: Navel Oranges, Blood Oranges, Page Mandarins, Ruby Red Grapefruit, Fuji Green Apple, chervil, chive, edible pansies, rapini, radish,  & last but not least, slivered kumquats from Chef's own backyard tree.  Interesting combinations result as the taste buds pick out fruity, floral and fresh green notes in the dish.

The dish also celebrates Chef's deft hand with Gastriques ~ sweet or savory reductions which are the result of sugar, often combined with fruit, caramelized until nutty brown, then cut with either vinegar or wine.  Despite their reliance on sugar as a catalyst, gastriques are often savory for as sugar cooks, its sweetness subsides.

Most bistro dishes are a result of the classic line up: Marbled cuts of meat using salt and herbs to heighten flavor, wine to mellow, starch to carry the sauce.  But the ultimate brightness in many of Ryan's classic French country dishes comes from his love and use of vinegar.  Two gastriques here rely upon vinegar ~ the mandarin and the apple ~ to bring a brighter nose and sharper initial taste before they mellow on the palette.

When we can, we serve honeycomb with our artisan cheese plates to remind folks honey doesn't start out refined in a jar.  The honeycomb served with this fruit salad comes from Hector's here in Sonoma County.

Bees have been much on our mind as of late, as the mysterious 4 year-old crisis of disappearing honeybees deepens.  While a new heavy bee die-off this winter may be the result of extreme weather, no one really knows yet what's causing a worldwide hive collapse.  Pesticides surely play a role, but sometimes I think ~ between CAFOs and suburbs ~ bees have just had enough.  Say it isn't so.

all photos and text, Jil Hales, unless noted otherwise.

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Smoked Salmon

Dish of the Week:

Smoked Salmon Salad

Smoked salmon has been a staple in Russian and Scandinavian diets for centuries, long before the world learned how good Omega 3s are for us.  Like preserving, curing relies upon traditional techniques that extend our enjoyment of nature’s bounty, which is always a good thing.

Chef Ryan’s Cold Smoked Salmon is a dish of unusual color for the middle of winter: radish, mandarins, avocado, sunchoke chips, pickled onions, rapini, chervil, chives. As a delicious nod to the dish’s Russian tradition, Chef included perfect cubes of cooked potato and a luxurious caviar crème fraîche dressing.

There are two stages to preserving salmon, which go hand in hand: brining and smoking.  Brining draws water and moisture out of the fish, but care must be taken so the salt used in the brining process does not overwhelm the taste of the sea. By the same token, spices want to enhance, not interfere, with salmon’s hallmark flavor profile, which is sweet and rich.

Ryan prefers cold smoking to hot because as the temp never exceeds 90 degrees F, the fish cooks while retaining the translucent pliant texture it had raw.  Cold smoked salmon is also easier to slice.

Chef made two dressings for the salad which ingeniously played off one another: a sharp citrus vinaigrette (fresh squeezed lemon, orange, grapefruit and lime juice, virgin olive oil, apple vinegar, salt) followed by a languorous trail of caviar crème fraîche.  The combination of the two brought out disparate but savory elements ~ from the sharpness of the pickled onion, through the green notes of chervil and chive, to the sweet citrus of mandarin.  As for the meeting of caviar, crème fraîche and potato, it would have brought a smile to any Czar’s face.  Or serfs like us.

I love salmon. But the truth is, we’re coming to the end of it.  These days sustainably harvested salmon is a very rare treat.  Alaskan troll-caught and California rod and reel, when you can find them, are the gold standard ‘wild’ alternatives to Loch Duart farmed.  Next week we begin a discussion about sourcing fish mindfully.  It’s a conversation all Chefs who are passionate about food needs to participate in, sooner rather than later.

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Barndiva's 6th Annual Oscars dinner party

The Fighter: Raw Course

Chiogga Beet Tartar, Caviar Moussaline, Mustard Vinaigrette, Sunchoke Chips

The dish we paired with The Fighter was meant to be raw and bloody ~ though the ‘blood’ came from a vibrant beet tartar whose magnificent color was spiked with a bit of vinegar.  It was topped with a moussaline of whipped crème fraîche, a dollop of caviar, and a wreath of baby sunchoke chips.  Texturally, while the beets and sunchoke chips initially tasted very different, the earthy flavor profiles of both root vegetables played in concert when paired with the creamy moussaline and salty caviar.

Black Swan: Salad Course Butter Lettuce Salad, Ruby Red Grapefruit, Meyer Lemon, Virgin Olive Oil, Radish

The idea behind serving a spare green salad to honor a movie about starving ballerinas started as a joke.  Then Chef saw Black Swan and was actually incredible moved by Natalie Portman’s beauty and elegance.  With it’s ruffle of butter lettuce, sharp crimson edge of radish, and delicate segments of ruby red grapefruit, the salad, finished with champagne vinaigrette and a shower of flowering rapini, was indeed a visual ballet of color and form.  Delicious as well.

True Grit: Fire Course Veal Chop, Boulangère Potatoes, Golden Chanterelle Mushroom, Pickled Pearl Onion

Back in the day, when people still cooked on the hearth, small town bakeries were often used by villagers to cook their evening meal in the still warm wood fired ovens once the bread run was finished.  There wasn’t a lot of heat left and space was always at a premium ~ but I’m guessing some wonderful rustic recipes came out of this unique and very communal way of cooking.  The story behind Boulangère potatoes was simple: meats were put on the top shelf with sliced potatoes beneath them, the better to catch the delicious meat drippings.

Ryan’s homage to the dish couldn’t involve a bread oven.  But if you took your eyes away from the screen on Oscar night and closed them, it was easy to taste the inspiration.  His savory layer cake of thinly shaved potatoes was saturated in dark stock that dripped down flavoring the potatoes during the baking process.  Served alongside big juicy veal chops from milk and grass-fed free range calves, this was haute campfire with True Grit.  The veal was sourced from Sonoma Direct, where Ritz Guggiana and his cookbook-writing daughter Marissa (Primal Cuts) find some of the most delicious ethically sustainable animals in the county.

Toy Story 3: Sweet Course 3 flavors of Bon Bons

Opps.  While the Journal’s photographer clearly remembers devouring the Toy Story 3 Bon Bon course just as Best Picture was announced, images of it clearly did not make it into the camera.  The plate was a riot of color ~ with sprinkles, roasted coconut and almond flakes covering dark, milk and white chocolate Bon Bons filled with passion fruit, vanilla and crème fraîche ice cream.  The good news is that the Bon Bons above are equally delicious and better yet, available often on our regular dessert menu.

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Blonde Frisée Salad

Dish of the Week:

Blonde Frisée Salad with Warm Garlic Crouton, Bacon, Pecorino, Hen Egg & Chives

Bistro classics have enduring appeal, in part because of the virtuoso way they balance the rich comfort of full-flavored cuts of meat with the bright flavors of vinegar or wine.  Taking a classic dish and updating it with panache is something Chef loves to do, and this salad is no exception.

The addition of crème fraîche to the vinaigrette is not traditional but it refines the connection between the meaty satisfaction of the lardons and the bracing clarity of vinegar.  The salad is typically made with Frisée, aka frilly endive, which belongs to the chicory family.  This often maligned salad green has a lot going for it when picked young and prepped with skill.  A creamy vinaigrette clings to Frisée’s frilly edges like no other salad green.  The blonde variety we use, soft and peppery in flavor, has a wonderful crunch.  Other ingredients Chef Ryan incorporates to elevate the dish to an elegant dinner salad ~ without losing its essential bacon and eggs appeal ~ is a handful of mache, finely diced red onion, fresh chives, and a shaving of dry grated pecorino (the kind with lovely salt crystals).

A softer loaf for your croutons will still give you the desired crunch without tearing at the roof of your mouth.  All home chefs have their own methods of producing a crouton that has the requisite taste of garlic ~ only rule is to try and avoid the bitterness burnt garlic imparts.  At Barndiva, as we make garlic confit almost daily for other dishes, we save the olive oil, fragrant with garlic, for our croutons.

There are two different cuts of Applewood smoked bacon in the salad ~ a thick dice, cooked slowly to melt the fat revealing the fullness of the pork belly, and thin strips of crispy grilled ‘breakfast’ bacon.

These highly addictive pork nuggets are mixed into the salad along with the croutons, while the strip of bacon is strategically placed alongside the fried hen egg, perfect for dipping, triggering that classic bistro moment when the yolk breaks and a golden river flows through the dressed greens. All photos Jil Hales, unless otherwise noted.

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Barndiva's Valentine's Dinner ~ 2011

Barndiva’s Valentine’s Dinner ~ 2011

Many a great chef has floundered on the sea of expectation that is otherwise known as ‘a romantic Valentine’s Dinner’.  “It’s the equivalent of making love with your hands tied,” a chef once told me.  “Even happy couples come in with weighted expectations.”

True, but confounding expectations are what’s great about love, right? We followed a hunch this year that the only thing couples who chose Barndiva for this very special meal didn’t want us to do was bore them.  It was Chef’s idea to use the 5 senses to inspire each dish.  When his insistence on a sorbet intermezzo between the entrée and dessert brought us to six courses we did some quick research on ‘the 6th sense’.  Turns out premonitions- especially when they are of greater things yet to come- was perfect inspiration.

1st Course: Touch

We started the meal with a Barndiva Classic, Warm Goat Cheese Croquettes, which beg to be eaten with your fingers.  Golden salty crust, toothsome creamy filling with a heart of housemade tomato jam. Fingers used again to glide through rivulets of honey studded with lavender flowers.

2nd Course: Sight

You eat with your eyes, first and foremost, but the mouth and the stomach have to follow for something to be both beautiful and delicious.  The spirit of Matisse hovered above the salad course, a delightful dance of form and color: glistening gold and red beets, tutu pink and orange citrus, ripe avocado, blades of red radish, all atop a creamy mound of fresh crab meat.  Nestled in a shower of Rapini flowers was a single tiny house-made Kennebec Potato Chip.

3rd Course: Smell

How to fully enjoy the aroma of our third course, a warm wide-lipped bowl of truffle flecked risotto?  Some lifted it up and inhaled deeply, while others just closed their eyes, and slightly bowed their heads.  There was no escaping the ethereal woodsy smell redolent of truffle oil.  A big fat Maitake mushroom in a crispy tempura batter held pride of place, but the bravura touch was a halo of translucent crème fraîche foam.

4th Course: Taste

Though we offered a vegetarian option, most diners headed straight for the Snake River petite fillet seared and bathed in garlic, butter and rosemary for their main course.  Sweet buttery batons of carrots, caramelized endive, and a mount of OMG Yukon Gold Potato Purée with lobster and crème fraîche sent the dish straight to Umami Heaven.

5th Course: Sound

The snap of a sweet and nutty Florentine was point of entry to our fifth course, a late intermezzo of bracing citron sorbet with slivers of grapefruit and mandarin citrus.  Like a dip in a deep cold lake, it brought you to your senses, just in time for the final course.

6th Course: 6th Sense

Love is risk, we all should know that by now, so it’s a good thing that premonitions exist if only to remind us from time to time to trust our instincts.  Which brings us to our 6th course, Temptation, a triple threat… but definitely not one to be afraid of.  A Lady Gaga lunar hat of white chocolate balanced precariously on an orb of creamy passion fruit ice cream, which, in turn, sat melting on a couplet of moist dark chocolate ganache cakes.  Lovers were encouraged to end the meal as they started it, intimately gliding their fingers through a passion fruit syrup the color of a Mexican sunset.  We don’t know what they got up to after they left Barndiva but ‘our’ 6th sense tells us for most of them, the sweet notes continued.

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Lamb Shank

Dish of the Week:

Preston Lamb Shank with Parsnip Purée, Caramelized Endive & Fennel Marmalade

As soon as we took possession of this beautiful sweet-grass fed* animal from Lou Preston, we broke it down and began to slow roast the bones intended for stock.  The next day we sautéed the shank along with the shoulder, tongue, neck, and tail until golden brown adding white wine, carrots, tomato paste, garlic, fennel and the stock from the roasted bones.

We love it when we get an opportunity to serve a bone-in cut of meat: the shank is especially delicious as slow cooking enhances the flavor in each bite.  Lou’s animals are leaner than most, which imparts a subtle meaty flavor with an unmistakable hint of sweet-grass in the finish.

The final sauce, with its rich caramel color, is the result of further reduction with sherry vinegar, butter and herbs.

The earthy trio of shank, parsnip purée and caramelized endive, all saturated flavor profiles, call for contrasting notes to brighten and lift the dish to a higher level.  We’ve added two ~ a quenelle of fennel marmalade is made by combining diced caramelized fennel, champagne vinegar, reduced vegetable stock, a pinch of sugar and fennel pollen.

Then, just before the plate is wisked off to the dining room, a light shower of fennel fronds and Rapini flowers completes this perfect winter dish.

*sweet-grass fed: Everyone wins with biodynamic farming as practiced by the Prestons.  The animals are moved daily fertilizing the soil from pasture to pasture, orchard to orchard, and in Lou’s case, vineyard to vineyard.  The animal gets to eat the sweetest top grass and the diner gets to enjoy superlative taste from a life well grazed.  Last but certainly not least, Barndiva gets to honor its commitment to supporting a sustainable food shed.

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Barndiva Quiche

Dish of the Week:

Barndiva Quiche with Beet & Citrus Salad and Rapini Flowers

Rapini (the flower of Broccoli Rabe) are a joyous addition to any mid-winter salad. They also taste as good as they look ~ bright and floral.

In this dish they accompany the Barndiva Quiche, which over the years has become lead lunch chef Danny’s signature dish.  Both the Appareil* for the quiche and the salads we serve with it change frequently as the gardens wax and wane with the seasons.  We always aim to make the accompanying salad fresh and light as a foil for the richness of the quiche.

The salad: red and gold beets marinated in champagne vinegar and wonderful Preston of Dry Creek Extra Virgin VOO gently tossed with endive, avocado, red radish, arugula, fines herbes (in this case tarragon, chive, parsley, chervil), and last, but certainly not least, juicy Satsuma Mandarin oranges, sliced on end.  A shower of Rapini flowers completes the salad.

Danny’s Quiche combines sautéed arugula, roasted baby artichokes & feta in a classic savory custard: •3 whole eggs *500 grams of Clover Organic Cream *fresh nutmeg dust *Maldon Salt *Madagascar Pepper (always use a good quality peppercorn)

There are 3 steps to baking our Quiche: Roll and pre-bake the Pâte Brisée tart shell Fill and bake until just set Finish under the broiler to caramelize the top. *Appareil- A French term for the mixture of various ingredients when commonly placed into a cake or pastry.

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Vegan Winter Vegetable Sauté

Dish of the Week:

Vegan Winter Vegetable Sauté with Roasted New Potatoes, Local Spicy greens, Mustard Vinaigrette

The images above represent a portion of the mise en place* a single hot station needs on hand every night in order to execute the dishes on Chef Fancher’s ever changing seasonal menus.  They also form the basis for a request for a Vegan entrée, which we are happy to prepare a la minute.  The better the mise en place, the greater the opportunity to create a memorable produce- inspired dish.

Barndiva’s kitchen under Chef Fancher relies upon a traditional French “Brigade” system where the lead chef on a hot or cold line must have mastery over the focus of a single station.  Pulling as we do from the most superlative produce gardens in Sonoma County, the Entremetier ~ the chef in charge of the vegetable station ~ is a pretty important position.  Andrew Wycoff is Barndiva’s talented Entremetier who arrives each morning to face hours of prep where his mise en place will be essential to our dinner menus, as well as providing a vibrant display of creative possibilities when animal proteins do not figure in a dish.

First thing to hit the heat with this dish were the Baby Yukon Gold Creamers ~ slowly simmered in salted water until soft, then peeled of their skins.  They were then roasted in a hot sauté pan until golden brown and finished with olive oil and Maldon Sea Salt.

While the potatoes were roasting Chef specified which winter vegetables to use: cauliflower – broccoli – pearl onion – carrot – pumpkin – Brussels sprouts.  These were sautéed and finished with sage & olive oil.

The lively mustard vinaigrette, pulled from another station with mise en place prepared by our Garde Manger (salad chef), Hugo Hernandez, was comprised of spicy brown mustard – champagne vinegar – grape seed oil – shallot – carrot dice – leek dice – chive – chervil – salt & pepper – pinch of sugar.

To finish the dish Chef Ryan chose a loose ruffle of spicy local greens – an heirloom variety from Mix Garden.  Then this delightful Vegan dish, which took hours to prepare though only a few inspired moments to cook was off to the dining room.

*Mise en Place ~ the collection of ingredients (e.g. cuts of meat, relishes, sauces, par-cooked items, spices, freshly chopped vegetables and other components) which are specifically prepared to execute each dish on the menu.

 

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and the winner is...

(originally posted December 22, 2010)

For the second to last newsletter of the year, we thought it would be fun (and relatively easy) to take a quick look back at all the ‘dish of the weeks' we compiled and choose a winner. Fun yes. Easy? Not a chance. We were blown away with the sheer volume of mouthwatering images and fascinating cooking tidbits chef and I managed to compile in one short year. Choosing a dish each week is not based on science (discovering a new technique) or math (what sold the most), it's an ephemeral decision made a few days, sometimes a few hours, before compiling ingredients and shooting them. We did not set out to build what has turned out to be a fascinating food journal (a calendar? The start of a cookbook?). Only two things mattered: the joy of working together and the connection each dish had to a built-in reverence for great raw product, which always guides us.

What began as a bit of entertainment, a way to make the newsletter a more enticing read for you, turns out to be the best Christmas gift we could have given ourselves ~ a grace note to a year that, while it tested us in every way possible, ended up being more nourishing ~ in all senses of the word ~ than any that has preceded it.

Dish of the Week is very much a collaborative project ~ just as every dish we send out to the dining room must be. In this, Chef Ryan, Lukka, Geoff and I are supported by an insanely talented kitchen staff. A special call out to Tommy, who has brought so much to the table (literally and figuratively) this, his first year with us, and to Pancho, Danny and Drew, who always have our backs. A special note of thanks as well to my incredibly talented assistant, K2, who patiently works with me every step of the way to capture the essential spirit of each dish.

In the end, we could not come up with a single winner ~ so we give you our favorite meat, fish and vegetable entrées. While each in a special way contributed to the food narrative we try to tell here at Barndiva, a remarkable taste profile combined with the beauty of Ryan’s plating ultimately won our vote.

2nd Runner Up...

Compressed Watermelon Herb Salad This dish was the height of elegant simplicity, but only one of many that hummed with glorious local color, matched by a wonderful taste profile that brought the farm right into your mouth. We are blessed to have many produce partners, thanks in part to Fork & Shovel speed dating events we host here at the barn every year. Two of our favorite veg and fruit producers, Early Bird's Place and Mix, also contract plant for us, a business partnership more thoughtful restaurants are discovering. One of our most popular blogs this year was the one about Myrna and Earl Fincher (October 6th) whom you can buy from at the Healdsburg Farmers Market.

Herbs for these dishes, like most coming out of our kitchen, were grown right here in our raised beds behind the gallery, or at Barndiva Farm in Philo where we also get our dry farmed apples, pears, figs, and chestnuts.

1st Runner Up...

Fritschen Vineyard's Lamb's Liver & Onions 2010 marked the beginning of our collaboration with the Fritschen Family, whose vineyards boast the grapes that Thomas DeBiase, our sommelier, makes into fine wine here in Healdsburg. For three weeks in July we chronicled a nose to tail cooking project that utillized almost every part of a beautiful animal raised for us at the Fritschen Family Farm. Whenever we can, we will continue to work with local farmers to procure excellent animal proteins for Barndiva. We do this despite a lack of local humane slaughterhouses that make these purchases more expensive than it need be for both farmer and chef. In the coming year, look forward to more lamb from Fritschen and the wonderful Preston Family Farm, along with goats and rabbits from new farms. Every season we list on our menus at Barndiva the primary purveyors who inspired us to create that specific menu. Some can be found at your local Farmer's Market if you live in Sonoma, Marin, or Mendocino County.

AND now...the winner is...

Escabèche! Keeping the fish and shellfish selections interesting for our customers continues to be a challenge for us as we try to honor a commitment to primarily source from waters within 100 miles of the restaurant. Though we keep an open mind to ongoing science about the safety of farmed fish, we do not serve it in Barndiva for a variety of reasons (taste being only one). When I spoke at a Seafood Symposium at the U.C. Davis Bodega Bay Marine Aquarium a few years back, (a wonderful event, the brainchild of my good friend Randi Seidner produced by Slow Food Russian River,) I made the point that some responsibility must fall on the diner when it comes to helping restaurants source sustainable fish and shellfish. If you say you want local, do not turn your nose up at varieties you are not familiar with when a restaurant you trust serves it! Happily, there is such faith in anything Chef Fancher sends out of his kitchen that we are able to stretch with less familar local selections without fear it will hit our bottom line. The dish here, Escabèche, is a case in point. It sold out every time it appeared on the menu, often as a result of someone just seeing it come to an adjoining table or hearing our servers talk about it. Make no mistake: when a line caught wild salmon walks in the door in the arms of one of our fishmongers, we grab it. We love local halibut and sole. In the coming year we may cast our net as far as Oregon and Washington's coastal waters, but no fish served at Barndiva will have taken a plane ride to get to your plate, or ever been frozen.

The full collection of our Dish of the Weeks, are available in the Barndiva Journal Archives- or keep reading...

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