Napa Getaway: Lunch at Bouchon

So we decided to start the Labor Day festivities early by heading up north to Napa on Thursday.

I know, I know. Ordinarily we wouldn't be caught dead in the middle of what will be tourist central this weekend. By heading up well before the weekend though, we were pleased to note that there was almost no traffic (by Napa standards).


Plus, we could also hit a few non-wine-related targets: the fabulously quirky art collection of Rene diRosa's DiRosa Art Preserve, a glimpse of the new foodie destination, the Oxbow Public Market and lunch at Thomas Keller's relaxed bistro, Bouchon.

Frankly it was a good thing that we'd made reservations (the only way you can see the diRosa collection) for 10 am. We saw bumper-to-bumper commute traffic going the other direction early in the morning, and saw bumper-to-bumper traffic headed for wine country on our way back, but for our part had relatively smooth sailing up to the DiRosa.

When you're tired of trying to cram up to the bar in tasting rooms all over the Wine Country, the DiRosa is a terrific oasis where you can see an enormous, eccentric collection of art by Northern California artists-- Robert Arneson, David Best, Roy DeForest, Enrique Chagoya, Joan Brown, William Wiley, Viola Frey-- all of whom DiRosa was personal friends with. Until recently it wasn't possible to see the collection unless Mr. DiRosa invited you up to his house himself. It's a fabulous look at some rarely seen art and well worth a detour.

Call before you go to reserve a tour of the preserve. DiRosa has idiosyncratically scattered artwork large and small across the extensive property, where he himself lived up until the beginning of 2007. We took the extended "Discovery Tour" which enables you to get a little more viewing time within each of the areas where the art is displayed and is definitely worth a little extra money and time.

I should mention too that all the galleries are nicely air conditioned, a point that received not a small amount of consideration as temperatures hovered in the smothering 90s all day. Every time we went outside, it felt as though someone had thrown a pre-warmed wool blanket over us. I'm usually all about the picnic, but for once, I was glad that we had decided to eschew the outdoor picnic.

We did make a brief detour to take a peek at the new Oxbow Market in Napa, which is right next to the COPIA Wine Center. From the looks of it, it is meant to house markets and shops, a la Ferry Plaza Market or Borough Market. Will it be as popular? It's hard to say, but apparently the COPIA center hasn't drawn as much traffic as the planners had hoped.

Still, it looks like it's set to open fairly soon in the fall of 2007, and has an impressive list of shops signed up for the space, including Fatted Calf.

From there we went on up to Yountville, for lunch at Bouchon. We were nearly half an hour early, and I was absolutely starving. But with the kind of pleasantly accommodating and warm service that we've come to expect from a Thomas Keller place, they fit us in ahead of time, despite a full up dining room.

It seems silly, but the whole relaxed, genuine approach of everyone on staff, from the maitre d, to the servers, to the guy sitting outside folding napkins, was just perfect. In my mind I was thinking to myself "Why doesn't every restaurant train their staff to be exactly like this?" It was --for lack of a better way of putting it -- so NORMAL. They were normal, nice people: not conceited and self-important just because you're Dining in A Thomas Keller Establishment, not being extra-obsequious, not ignoring us -- just really normal and friendly.

I was trying not to gobble down the bread which they put on the table, because I knew better things were afoot, but I was so hungry I probably could have eaten a palm tree, and it didn't help that the noisy boisterous group of people at the next table rushed off during dessert and left about a half a dozen half-eaten lemon tarts JUST LYING THERE on the table.

"I could grab you one," suggests my Omnivore as he catches me eying the tarts for the fifth time.

I weigh the options and decide that I might be coming back here -- I should try to look like I'm not a complete savage.

I ordered the steak frites, which, when it arrived, certainly looked like it was quite sufficient to assuage even my hunger. A lovely luscious hunk of steak topped with minutely chopped caramelized onions, and a pat of tarragon butter, plus a mound of fries the size of Mount Diablo on the plate.

The server joked, "They're running out of french fries in the kitchen."

"That's because they're all on my plate!" I reply, mouth watering at the sight of it all.

The steak was definitely on the "rare" side of medium rare, which was fine with me -- a tender piece of meat, with a fine sear on the outside. The onions were umami-packed, the fries (double fried, I'm sure) were perfect with a wonderful salt that adds a bright metallic glint to each bite.

"You're going to have to help me with this," I inform my Omnivore.

For his part, he's ordered the housemade Boudin Blanc, a bit lighter than the Boudin Noir, our server informs us. It comes with the creamiest mashed potatoes ( cooked, mashed, run through a food-mill, passed through a tamis and then a chinois is my guess -- they were that smooth....) topped with prunes. The server suggested a nice wine to pair with it, which, as is par for a Keller place, matched everything perfectly.

The boudin is totally out of this world, sort of a cross between a feathery pate, and a delicate mousse, but wrapped up sausage style. Somehow I don't think this is that same kind of boudin that Southerners suck down in the parking lots.

Add to this a Pimms cocktail and a Lillet Blanc, and you have two exceptionally happy diners. It was so satisfying that, despite coming in starving, I still couldn't finish the steak or the frites. We had to bypass dessert and (horrors!) skip the cheese plate, even though it had two cheeses I didn't recognize on it, which I consider to be the sign of an excellent cheese selection.

All in all, the whole bill came to around $80, and considering the level of satisfaction that it generated, we elevated Bouchon to four star in our minds. If this place was in the city, we'd be there all the time. Fantastic food, unpretentious, and great bang-for-your-buck.

We love you, Thomas Keller.



Send me off now to Siesta Way.

Kappa as Kappa can

So we had one of those odd dining experiences on Friday night that led to a long bout of soul searching and discussion of who we really are, what we really want, and what the heck it means to get "cuisine" in the Bay Area?

The event that spawned all this was a dinner with Randy and Cindy of Food Migration at Kappa --a little open secret of a place, located in Japantown above the Denny's and behind a barely discernible sliding door, marked only by a lantern painted with the name of the place... in Japanese. The husband and wife team who run the restaurant-- which, and I kid you not, is approximately the size of our none-too-palatial living room-- reserve only ten places for dinner each night.

The place has cachet.

Now let me preface my next rant, by saying, that really, truly, we went there with an open heart and an empty stomach. Sea snails, okra, dried herring roe, natto, monkfish livers -- bring it on. We had at least two members of our group who would eat any of those items, and four out of four of us had our game faces on.

Allez Cuisine!

Honest.

Allez.


Our hostess, outfitted in a lovely kimono, led our group into a "private" alcove, somewhat separated from the bar, where other patrons were already watching, as their dinners were constructed.

It felt a little segregated, but I thought, well, if I do anything embarrassing with the food ("No, no, NO! You're not supposed to snort the natto!"), at least no one but good friends will have to bear it.













The menu came in both Japanese (a beautifully hand-calligraphed version seen above) and English, although, the kind of English that really requires you to know Japanese. Fortunately, Cindy had the foresight to bring along a book of Japanese food words, which she could surreptitiously consult under the table.

"Psst! Does it say what's ooh-soo-zuck-oo... oo...oo... thingamajig?"

Our hostess, who is doubtless, experienced at assisting hapless gringos as they wade through the menu, could hardly have helped but pin us as total koryori virgins. She offered several recommendations as to sake selections, of which we knew nothing, but were interested to taste-test. We started with a sweet Kikusui, and then moved to Hakkaisan, and finished with a third selection, whose name I can not remember, because I consumed too much of the first two.

As an amuse-bouche, a lovely little piece of cooked tuna, marinated in a tangy sweet sauce and topped with sesame seeds came our way.





We also had ordered one of the day's specials, a fava-bean mousse topped with a stock-flavored gelatin and a cooked shrimp.

This was probably my favorite dish of the evening, although I didn't realize it at the time... Very light and a wonderful mix of flavors and textures, it really had a beautiful delicate touch.


In the spirit of adventure, we had also ordered the sea snails. My Omnivore and Cindy both popped those suckers down, leaving one each for Randy and myself. I looked at it carefully, examined the small horns on the creature's head, thought about the whole "texture" thing, looked deeply into my heart and said, "Um... nope. Can't do it."

To which Randy responded, "Well, if she's not going to do it, neither am I."

"Good man. " Thanks for backing me up, Randy!

We were informed that it was, in the parlance of Iron Chef, "a bit rubbery."

Monkfish livers. Okay. Okay. I like liver. I like it. I do. Just because I've never eaten fish liver... (did I even know that fish HAD livers?) I take an experimental bite. Okay. Alright. Yes, it's not bad. A bit on the bland side for liver, but maybe that's a better thing when you're talking liver. Really, quite nice.

We consume the monkfish livers aggressively.


Fried black skin pork cutlets.

I'm starting to feel a little dubious now about the cooking. I mean the execution. We cook a lot of pork products in our house. And in this part of the country, I feel there's no reason why pork should ever be dry, low-flavor or difficult to bite through. And this panko-crusted cutlet was all three. It did however come with a killer brown sauce and mustard, which vastly increased the flavor, but still couldn't save the dish for me.

And filed under "Texture Adventures" is the sea scallop special. This is a raw scallop with cooked okura (okra) tororo. Basically Slimed Slimy Slime.

I appreciated the sweetness of the scallop, although I guess it was a bit of a surprise for me that it wasn't cooked, which I discovered on putting it into my mouth. I liked the saltiness of the fish roe. But I just can't get with the snotty texture of the okra, which was just...just...slimy.

The dish looked gorgeous, but ultimately, I put a chalk mark in my mind next to "cultural differences" and moved on.

My Omnivore had already started on a piece of this kazunoko, or dried herring roe with shaved bonito over it. I knew that because I could hear him crunching ... and crunching ... and crunching. It was really loud.

Cindy took a piece, and I could hear her crunching...and crunching... and crunching...

I shifted the plate closer and picked up a piece, which was pretty much brick hard. Learning nothing from the experience of others, I popped the whole thing in my mouth, and was crunching...and crunching... and crunching. Actually the crunching sound inside my head was far more disturbingly loud than on the others, as if each crunch were echoing off the bones of my skull. I continued unhappily crunching, feeling as though I were trying to consume very finely made, plastic bubble-wrap.

I've since done some reading up on kazunoko because I couldn't quite believe that this was seriously how it's supposed to be served. I mean, yeah, the texture was a shift from the Slimed Slimy Slime, but should it cause an ache in the jaw? Someone more experienced than I, please inform!

By this time we were feeling like this adventure in Texture land was all well and good, but we wanted some food now, please. Some nourishment? Some calories? Please?

We ordered duck breast, three small slices, about an inch and a half across each. Nice flavor, but not amazingly good.


Some red snapper, this was quite good. The fish had been marinated in something fairly yummy and then grilled, and it was moist and probably the boldest flavor of the evening.

There were also chicken wings, which were consumed with slightly desperate speed before we could snap a photo.

And by the time we arrived at this point, it was about 9:30 pm, almost everyone else had left, and they were turning up the chairs and mopping the floor. Time to go.

So I don't know what to tell you, all ye who adore Kappa. We didn't have a great time, AND it was $256 for our party of four --who drank, it must be admitted, a fair amount of sake. (As an aside, if tasting sake is your thing though, the list at Kappa seems very fairly priced and perhaps a nice way to introduce yourself to various styles.)

Were they having an off night? Did they decide that a group of newbies and koryori virgins should be placed in The Room of Isolation and fed The Special Menu? Did they say to themselves, "Oh, so you won't take the omokase menu, eh? That'll larn yah!"

Or did they spot my none-too-suave digital camera action, think "damn, she's going to blog us and send thousands of tourists swarming our ten-seat dining establishment [obviously not knowing that given my blog traffic numbers, that would NEVER occur]. Toshi, sweetie, quick, gimme the crunchy roe. No, no, the CRUNCHY roe! [nudge, nudge, wink, wink.]"

Or is this really how Japanese cuisine goes? Dearohdear.

We all repaired back to our apartment for some buttermilk panna cotta and strawberries, to discuss, and because, truth be told, we were all still hungry.

The whole experience stirred some conversation though. I mean, how bad was it really? There were some good dishes, and there were some really unusual things that turned out better than I'd thought they might be. But for sheer satisfaction, not to mention price/value ratio, I felt that Kappa fell below the mark.

I mean for heaven's sake, I left hungry. Now I'm not the most voracious eater, and over the years, I've learned that you don't need to have gigantic portions on a plate. What matters most to me is whether my mouth has been satisfied or not. I could eat a giant plate of pasta and still need more because the sauce had no flavor. Or I could have three exquisite raviolis that taste like heaven and feel like I don't need another bite. So the fact that we all left unsatisfied from a place that was all about refined tastes makes me think to myself, "Maybe those 'Flava profiles' were just not on."

By contrast, I could have gone across the way to Tanpopo Ramen and gotten a bowl of noodles in a heavenly miso broth, and come out not only satisfied, but with a doggie-bag of leftovers that would serve me for lunch as well.

Maybe I'm just the vulgar, oafish American, who can't appreciate the subtlety of fine Japanese cuisine. Perhaps I need edumacatin'. Or maybe I should just stick with the cheeseburger and fries. Niman Ranch, please, with some Emmenthaler and Yukon Gold potatoes. Thanks.

Posh Nosh

One of my favorite little segments on the BBC is Posh Nosh, a spoof on all those hoity-toity cooking programmes which brings "Extraordinary food to ordinary people." The inimitable Richard Grant and Arabella Weir play Hon. Simon and Minty Marchmont and these two are absolutely, deliciously snooty.

I happened upon it one evening and stopped short at Minty's exhortation to "embarrass your carrots completely..."

Here's Simon's statement on food: "I once ate a Flayed Swordfish And Guava Millefeuille that reminded me, in one sweet mouthful, of a Sea Interlude by Britten, a painting by Turner and one of Michael Holding's rampant, perfect-length balls. Sniff your computer screen. What does it remind you of?

"Roasted fruits? A Hockney? Cherry blossom?

"No. It reminds you of nothing.

"Computer screens look, smell, feel (even taste) like nothing. They're devoid of sensuality. People who stare at screens all day should be shot. But there are so many millions of them. There simply isn't time."

• Episode 1: Architect's Fish and Chips -- "We've taken the potatoes out of potatoes..."
• Episode 2: Children's Birthday Parties --"I can just hear them saying, Mummy can I have another Roquefort Prosciutto and Fennel Bruschetta?"
• Episode 3: Paella -- "Bottarga.. it's as firm and moist as Tom Cruise after a hot bath."
• Episode 4: Beautiful Food -- "Look at these sexy Mexican avocados... looks texture, attitude.. a star is born."
• Episode 5: Bread and Butter Pudding -- "Take bred frye hit in yn oyle. Grynde hit with reysons..."
• Episode 6: Leftovers -- "'Dinner' is a middle manager from Leicester sucking up to Japanese clients. 'Supper' is an Italian language student sunning himself on a lovely June evening in Hyde Park, stretched out on one of those picnic rugs."
• Episode 7: Sauces --"Where would you be without me?" "Mykonos."
• Episode 8: Comfort Food -- "Spanish Toad in the Hole: Crapos in el Bujo-- first you need to alienate the chorizo..."

Making Better Butter

When we went over to the home of Ms. Five-and-a-Half and Mr Thirteen (along with Ms. Izzy-Inch) we brought along a bit of our homemade butter, and Mr. Thirteen admitted they'd noticed on the blog. I could just hear the shout going out, "Hey -- they're making homemade butter, those crazy cooks!!"

I mentioned in an earlier post that we were inspired by the post at Traveler's Lunchbox, and also a New York Times article about making butter. Herewith is the rundown on our little experiments thus far...

We wanted that great flavor, much of which, I think is probably attributable to the fact that some people can make butter from raw milk straight out of the cow. But is there any other way to make butter with better flavor?


We started to read around about how butter has been made in the past, and they all had a common theme: natural souring seems to be the key.

Most recipes call for letting the cream stand around til it sours, but that could take forever and seems iffy--I still have my doubts about which microbial organisms I can catch in our dusty air and which I can't. Traveler's Lunchbox suggested using an already active culture in yogurt, buttermilk or creme fraiche to get things going. We combined this idea with Alton Brown's heating pad method, which I use regularly to make yogurt, and it sours and thickens the cream beautifully.

For a batch of butter to last us a week (about a pound), I start with a quart of heavy cream.

[Funny Little Side Note: My Omnivore, on reading this, says with a scandalized moan, "No, don't say that! We do NOT go through a pound a week! People are gonna think we're just sucking the stuff down around here!"

"Well, but we do go through a pound a week, sweetie," I say very reasonably. That seems normal, doesn't it? After all, there's toast and biscuits and cooking, and ...

"No, we don't," he objects, "Maybe, MAYBE in two weeks..."

"No way," I say firmly. It's a pound. In one week. END Funny Little Side Note.]

Let your cream sour using the heating pad method -- I usually let it go overnight covered with a clean cloth and in the morning it's nice and tangy. Then chill it in the refrigerator for several hours.

When the cream is sufficiently cooled, you must whip it. And whip it. Whip it good.

For this part of the operation, it's best to either cover the bowl with a cloth as you whip, or cover every surface in the kitchen. It can get splashy and messy.

The idea here is to overwhip the cream, way past regular "dessert" stage, until it's all grainy and then some.

You'll know you can stop when you see pools of buttermilk forming and the rest is very sandy and grainy.

At this point, I usually stop the beaters and scrape and pour the whole shebang into a bowl lined with cheesecloth... or um... in our kitchen, the same clean dishcloth that I use for draining and straining all our dairy products.

(A cheap souvenir from Rhode Island.)

Then begins the long process of squeezing out the buttermilk and cleaning the butter. I should say here that I'm not the most patient person--I'd never have made it on the frontier, churning butter all day. I don't mind the process of squeezing, and then rinsing the butter in clean cold water to get the buttermilk out, but when I turn the lump of butter out of the towel, I know I'm going to spend about ten minutes kneading and rinsing the butter. Kneading and rinsing, kneading and rinsing. There always seems to be more buttermilk in there. Eventually, I get tired of it, and call it done. (It is in fact, however, advisable to get all the buttermilk out of the butter, because it will make the butter go rancid faster if you don't.)

I suppose that all that butter on my hands has to be good for my skin...

At this point, I've often had it, and my Omnivore steps in to help divvy up the lumps into our precious cazuelas and add in the all important sprinkle of sea salt.

Yum.

Now, is there anyone out there with a cow they'd be willing to share with us?

Eat Cheese Now

"We've got too much cheese in here," announces my Omnivore after inspecting the refrigerator in the morning.

Beg pardon? Too much cheese? We have too much?

"We have to start eating it."

OH. I see. Got it. So what you're saying is, we have to EAT the cheese. Okay. Yo comprendo. Eat cheese. Roger, wilco.

On the top, Tomme de Gluis, affined by Herve Mons.

To the left, Cremosina, a cow's milk with an intriguingly splotchy rind from Piedmont, Italy.

A trip to Martha-Martha-Land

I love staged shots.

This month's Martha Stewart magazine sports a feature about Martha's impossibly large, impossibly organized "crafts room."

"Similar items are stored together," the article informs us chirpily.

Oh, how easy, how simple life can be. Once again, the carrot of clean, color coordinated organization is dangled in front of us.

If we lived in Martha-Martha-land, our kitchen drawers would look like this:







When the reality, I feel, is that any person with a normal kitchen would have drawers that look like this.

Golden Garden Kings with Chocolate Eyes, plus Herbillette

Summer has finally arrived for us.

(NB: For San Franciscans, that means that we left the city and went to another location where there is no fog, and you can see the sun.)

Over the weekend, we spent a lovely afternoon Chez Ms. Five-and-a-Half and Mr. Thirteen, for their annual Deep Fried Turkey fiesta. Of course, we had to fight traffic getting out of Fogtown for nearly three-quarters of an hour before reaching the open road-- as if the gods were trying to emphasize the bliss of being up in the relaxing warmth of Petaluma.

As always, Ms. Five-and-a-Half's setting was gorgeous, with centerpieces of "garden kings with chocolate eyes." Sunflowers seem so nostalgic to me, a very grand, bright flower that nonetheless has a humble way of bending its head under the sunlight.

Herewith is the menu -- not too extravagant, but delicious:

Golden Garden King Dinner

Fresh Figs with Goat Cheese and Orange Blossom Honey

Deep Fried Turkey
Sagaponack Pudding
Grilled Orange Marinated Fennel
Mixed Green Salad
Fresh Focaccia
Apricot Macadamia Tartlets
Orange Raspberry Tartlets
Homemade Peach Ice Cream

Mr. Thirteen working the fryer/grill station. He injected the turkeys, delish Willie-Birds, with a spiced marinade, and we later caught numerous diners sneaking back to the kitchen to steal some of that fabulous crispy fried skin.

The birds were fried in peanut oil, which this year, was oddly difficult to obtain. Ms. Five-and-a-Half was told by numerous shopkeepers that it was "seasonal." Is that really true? If so, when is the season?

Seasonal, to me, means "the time when a fresh product is available," but shouldn't peanut oil, being a bottled extract, be available all year long-- not just during peanut season? Or does seasonal in this case mean "only during one forty-eight hour period in November when we can charge exorbitant prices for the oil in which cooks across the nation will fry millions of birds for a holiday table"?

Anyway, they did in fact find (apparently unseasonal) peanut oil, and as Ms. Five-and-a-Half puts it, "crisis averted."

The grill was put to hard labor grilling up the fennel, which we sliced a bit thickly, and so was still fairly crunchy. Everyone kindly assured me that they actually like crunchy fennel, but I'm still on the hunt for a better method of grilling the vegetable so that they aren't tough and inedible coming of the grill, but also aren't brunt to a crisp. Help, anyone?

More successful was our tried and true fast focaccia with some caramelized onions on top. No one believes me when I say that this recipe is ridiculously easy, but honest, really, I mean it. You stir everything together, dump the lot into a bowl, let it rise, punch it down and put it in a pan, let rise and then bake. It takes a few hours, but actual work time is minimal.

There are much more authentic recipes out there that require a starter, and more attention, and they do reward you with better flavor, but I find if you add in some herbs or garlic or caramelized onion to this one, the results are pretty satisfying.

Fast Foccaccia

5 cups unbleached flour
2 tsp salt

2 cups warm (110°) water
1 pkg yeast
6 tbsps olive oil
3 tbsp fresh rosemary, chopped basil, thyme or oregano

Optional: A few table spoons of chopped garlic, onions, sun-dried tomatoes, fennel, etc.

Mix flour and salt in a large bowl. In a separate bowl, mix water, yeast and then 3 tbsp olive oil. Stir yeast mixture into flour mixture until evenly moistened. Mix in herbs with dough.

Cover with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm place 1 1/2 hours.

Scrape into 10 1/2 x 15 1/2 pan and pat evenly into pan. Cover with oiled plastic wrap and let rise 1 hour.

Uncover and dimple dough by punching finger at 2" intervals into surface. Drizzle with remaining olive oil, and add chopped garlic, green pepper, sundried tomatoes, chopped olives, etc., whatever on top.

Bake at 450°F for 25 minutes.

======================

For dessert, we did an assortment of tartlets, interspersed with some homemade saffron cookies brought by one of our other guests, all topped off with some homemade Peach Ice Cream. Mmmmm, peach ice cream -- As a side note, I should mention that we have finally broken down and purchased an ice cream maker. Inspired by posts over at David Lebovitz's site and his new book, Perfect Scoop, we've heavily, HEAVILY experimented. Not much has made it on to the blog of late because most of the experiments have not yet been deemed worthy.

In fact, we've had to eat a lot of experiments, sadly.

I feel very badly about it.

(Not really.)

Apricot Macadamia Tartlets

For the crust:
1 cup coarsely chopped roasted macadamia nuts (about 5 ounces)
6 tablespoons plus 1/3 sugar
1/4 cup AP flour
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, melted

1 cup semidry white wine (such as Chenin Blanc)
1/3 cup water 1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise

4 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
2 tablespoons apricot preserves

6 apricots, thinly sliced

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Blend the nuts, 6 tablespoons sugar and flour in a food processor until nuts are finely chopped. Add the melted butter and continue to process until the mixture begins to clump together.

Divide the dough equally among the tartlet pans. 4-inch-diameter tartlet pans with removable bottoms work well or you can use a dozen mini-tartlets. Press the mixture onto bottom and up sides of pans. Bake until the crusts are golden and set, about 10-12 minutes. Transfer the pans to racks and allow the crusts to cool completely.

For the soaking syrup, combine the wine, water and 1/3 cup sugar in large nonstick skillet. Scrape in the seeds from the inside of the vanilla bean and add the whole bean as well. Stir the mixture over a medium heat until the sugar dissolves. Increase the heat and boil until the liquid is slightly thickened and reduced to generous 1/2 cup (about 5-6 minutes). Discard the vanilla bean or save for another purpose and cool the syrup to room temperature.

For the filling, combine the cream cheese, preserves and 2 tablespoons vanilla syrup in a fod processor. Purée until smooth. Spoon the filling into the cooled crusts and smooth the tops. Refrigerate until set, about 1 hour. (These can be made 1 day ahead. Keep the tartlets chilled.)

Transfer 2 tablespoons of vanilla syrup into a small bowl. Add the sliced apricots to the syrup in skillet and toss gently to coat. Arrange the apricot slices decoratively on top of the filling in the crusts. Brush the apricot slices with reserved 2 tablespoons vanilla syrup. Refrigerate tartlets 30 minutes. Serve chilled.

Adapted from Bon Appétit, July 1996.

==================================

I also can't resist adding a little cheese coda to our tale. We visited the home of the Cowgirls from the Creamery, who kindly laid out a Cheese-go-Round for us to sample. Sharp-eyed observers will no doubt notice the Red Hawk and the nettlesome St. Pat flanking the wheel of (was it Brie?) below. at 11 o'clock is an Abbaye de Belloc sheep's milk cheese and at 1 o'clock is a fine Mrs. Appleby's Cheshire, a better-than-cheddar hard cheese and perhaps the last of the true authentic farmhouse English Cheshires around.

In the middle is a fascinating little wedge of Tomme de Bordeaux or Herbillette, affined by Jean d'Alos. Ms. Cowgirl and I briefly get into a discussion about affinage, which I am hoping will be the Next Big Thing to catch on in cheese. The unusual goats milk Herbillette has crushed fennel, summer savory, juniper berries and peppercorns on the rind, which I definitely don't mind eating on this cheese. It's incredibly addictive, and I drop the credit for the beautiful finish at the feet of Jean d'Alos, the affineur, who lovingly raises the cheeses in his cave in Bordeaux. (Read more about his work on Chez Pim.)

When we arrived at the Cowgirls, Mme. Ranger hooted and said, "Oh, we met someone who's making dinner for you tomorrow-- she was looking for cheese for you!"

It seems our cheesy reputation precedes us. Okay, you can all laugh now, but life could be worse than having your friends unearth fascinating cheeses for you. Indeed, our neighbor La Canadienne, who invited us and another couple to dinner, had been in to consult with the Cowgirls, looking for obscure cheeses, and served up the always welcome Red Hawk, some buttery, grassy Tome de Couserans, and also the wonderful Tumalo Tomme, an aged unpasteurized, goat's milk cheese from Juniper Grove Farms in Oregon.

I'm highly entertained by the description of the Cowgirls' website that notes that the goats "are allowed to cavort freely in the fresh air, drink clear mountain water, and sup on shrubs and alfalfa that grow lushly in the rich volcanic soil..."

High-diddly-dee... a goaty life for me...

Call of the Rondin d'Alvignac

kitty dreams...









... the sound of cheese gently calling...








...he wafts over...







...a rude awakening?