melkor

You were doing fine until you started using logic... Sure matzo meal is flour and water, but just because you can use it doesn't mean you can use flour and water. You can make muffins and rolls and all sorts of other passover bread products that rise, but they can't use flour or yeast - steam is fine. The fact that none of this makes any sense is an integral part of the holiday in our house….

Almond flour can be used as a somewhat passable sub for flour in a lot of passover baked goods. I'd go with ground pine nuts and almond flour (hazelnut flour is good too). You'll need more egg to hold the dough together and the texture will be a bit gritty, but we've made lemon tartes, brownies, etc this way for the last few sedars.

The writer is fabricating the vast majority of the incident if not all of it - they take no reservations in person, the phones are answered by a phone system that transfers to a live person if you call during the hours they take reservations, and you are advised when you make a reservation to call and confirm 48 hours in advance. What bothers me about the article isn’t just that it bares no resemblance to the truth, but that it incorrectly characterizes the staff as unfriendly and aloof.

People who make such arguments seem to forget that $500.00 doesn't have the same value to some as it does to them. ← Of course, but the % of the public who are willing to spend that much for a meal is fairly small so it would be a perfect point for the article to focus on. My point remains that you'd be vastly better off mocking about the cost of the meal than the demeanor of the staff. I'm happy to pay what the restaurant charges for a meal; I've done so many times.

← While it is certainly true that getting a table at the FL isn't easy, the staff there is never ‘stooping’ to do anything – each and every member of the staff that I have interacted with has been extremely friendly and accommodating. All that is required is for the phone company to complete your call rather than some other person who is dialing at the same time. Pretentious is one of the many things the French Laundry is not. The article there misses the point anyway – it’s easy to argue that no meal could be worth $500/person, or that traveling across the planet for dinner as many of their customers do is ridiculous, or that fighting with countless other people to get through to make a reservation is crazy. Rather than poke fun at any of those points, they instead choose to characterize the restaurant as cold and aloof with no interest in meeting the needs of their guests. That’s just flatly not the case. Back to the restaurant itself – malachi, your meal sounds outstanding; it highlights what I think has been the largest improvement at the restaurant in a long time. Paul Roberts has turned the wine program into an absolute work of art - each and every one of the best wine pairings I’ve ever had have been at the French Laundry with wines he has selected.

The few Dashe wines I've tried were quite good. You should be able to find a local wine shop with half bottles of the Gruet sparklers - get one of each and decide which you like better, they should be under $10 for each half bottle.

A Prosecco is likely to be the best value for a sparkler, Cremant or a domestic sparkler would also work. Domestic sparklers usually use the name of the producers (Mumm, Ironhorse, etc) and they are for the most part labeled 'Brut'. If you have the name of the distributor perhaps their catalog can be found online and we could point out some good options at reasonable prices.

You aren't drinking enough Tequila...

1 case is 60 glasses. Does Stumptown have someone you can work with to make arrangements with the distributor? There are plenty of delicious sparklers available for not a lot of money, if you can get something instead of the champagne they are pushing on you then you'd likely have room in your budget for more bottles. Will they let you bring in wine and charge you corkage?

I want a huge spatula on the front of my car to fling slower traffic out of the way. Since that doesn't seem like something the highway patrol would be too fond of, I'll go for a gadget that can identify the unlabeled chunks of stuff we find in the freezer.

I think I realized I crossed that line when I went with a friend to my then favorite wine shop so he could grab a bottle for dinner and we left with a bottle for him and a case for me...

I haven't participated in any of the WOWs because my wine purchasing habits don't really support the way its setup. I buy some of my wine when I’m out tasting in Napa/Sonoma/Paso/SLO, though I’ve been buying less and less California wine the past few years. The majority of my wines I buy from places like Premier Cru, or North Berkeley (when they have a 50% off sale) – and I like to buy in quantity so I can enjoy the wine as it ages. Sure I could go out to Safeway and buy a bottle of the WOW that has been standing in a 75*F space under a florescent light for who knows how long, but I’d sooner pull something with a few years of bottle age out of the cellar. Looking over cellar inventory, there is very little that is widely distributed which I suppose makes it even less likely that the WOW pick will be something I already have on hand. If the WOW was a little more broad then it would be easy to participate. Mosel Riesling, Oakville Cabernet, Gigondas, or whatever for the bulk of them, toss in the occasional vintage based WOW (pre 1990, 1997 Italians, 2003 Germans, or whatever) and I suspect a lot more people would participate.

My only connection is that I volunteer at Copia as a wine docent and have since the place opened. One of the instructors for the WSET program runs the wine program at Copia and is one of the few Americans with an MW certification. The program is identical to the UK version, which means that there is twice as much time spent on pear cider than there is on wine from California. I thought it was worth doing, though as I currently have no interest in changing careers I'm happy to stop after the intermediate course.

The WSET program split into several chunks - intermediate, advanced, diploma, and then theres the MW program. The first three are available through Copia in Napa, I don't know if the MW program itself is available there. Intermediate can be done in a weekend (I got my intermediate cert a few years ago at Copia). All the info about the program is available here.

Absinthe would be my first pick off the top of my head, but it's a cab ride from your hotel or a mile and a half walk. Tartine would work too, but that's more pastries than brunch and you'll be out of luck on the bloody mary front. Zuni is your best bet for bloody marys, and I've never had a bad meal there either so maybe that would work better for ya. Either way, enjoy your trip!

The farmhouse inn is between Santa Rosa and Healdsburg in Forestville, they may be your best bet - I haven't had better food anywhere in northern Sonoma or Mendocino and the wine list is full of interesting wines at reasonable prices.

Getting a table at Bouchon requires at most a phone call a few days in advance. When are you going to be out here? If you have enough notice then the French Laundry is likely also a possibility. Neither are all that close to SF - without traffic it takes a bit more than an hour by car to get to either of them.

The other stupidest is that it's a bloody felony in California to make/sell cheese from unpasteurized milk (or to sell raw milk, period). My visitor from the UK was in disbelief when I told her that. And having had unpasteurized sheep's cheese that she brought, I'm ready to move to Great Britain and risk my health. ← ?? example of raw milk cheese from CA am i missing something? i think the cowgirl creamery site lists a bunch more...? my impression was that raw milk cheese must be aged 60 days, but not illegal to make or sell? interested in any info. thanks ← You are correct, but this is not really related to the sale of wild mushrooms in LA county. Let's try and keep this thread on topic. Feel free to start a new thread about raw milk cheese in CA.

I've been driving all over the place the past several weeks. For good drives I'd agree with a lot of what has already been written - highway 49 out by placerville, apple hill, highway 1 from stinson beach up to fort bragg, the russian river valley is also really nice. It all depends what you are looking for. There is an endless supply of fun twisty roads all over the state. Most of these areas have fairly mediocre food options, but there are some gems to be found. Just wait for the sun to come out and go enjoy the countryside before summer comes along and turns everything brown again.

I think the most important thing to realize when starting a collection is that over time your taste will change. I've got lots of odd bottles in the cellar that I really enjoyed at one time but over time they have lost their appeal - the same is true of everyone else I know with any significant number of bottles. If you are on a budget, I’d recommend against buying things by the case with the intent to age them unless you really love the wine.

That sounds about right. It costs around $15-$20 per person for lunch at Taylors. Great fries, good burgers, and good shakes - seems like a good thing to me. But, the one in St Helena is far better than the Ferry Plaza shop.

There are countless peruvian places in san francisco - I certainly wouldn't be surprised to see them pop up elsewhere. North african (tunesian/moroccan/algerian) food is also gaining popularity out here, though it's far less common than peruvian.

It isn't a matter of the dish working or not. If the goal when cooking is to make something that doesn't taste awful then the quality of your ingredients isn't an issue. Clearly good fresh ingredients taste better than their canned cousins. If you are looking for something more than just ‘not bad’ and you’ve got access to great ingredients then your task as a cook is far easier. Personally, almost everything I cook uses the best and freshest ingredients I can get my hands on.

Unfortunately neither the food nor the service live up to the hype.

Peruvian food is what is hot in SF. A lot of people like Limon, we prefer Mochica. Other options include Destino and Fresca.