Hey, Sweetie! Tasting California wildflower honey

I don't have a sweet tooth. At all. Indifferent to chocolate. Order cheese and wine for dessert. Eat fruit preserves one or two times a year (with cheese). I love fruits, but prefer them not too sweet. When I bake, people who don't like their desserts too sweet spoon sugar on my tarts. Those who like sweets, don't eat them at all.

Honey is different. The flavor of a good honey is so complex that you are not annoyed by the sweetness, you just enjoy the whole experience. It's as balanced as a well crafted wine.

I actually come from a honey producers family: my dad keeps bees at his country house near Moscow. He usually gets a few liters of honey to give to the family and friends, and some extra to sell. The varieties that he gets are clover, linden, buckwheat, and mixed summer flowers, depending on the season.

Now, where are my dad and his bees, and where am I? No chance to get our family honey, so I get mine from the farmers market.





Our farmers market honey people, Marchall's Farm, move their bees following the flowers, in order to produce single-origin honeys.
Here is what I got in their signature red mesh bag:
- Orange blossom honey - very floral, not too sweet
- California sage honey - delicate, very light herbal taste, not sweet at all
- Wild blackberry - SWEET, complex, fruity
- Star thistle honey - very complex, winey, slightly bitter (pleasant) aftertaste




I like my honey served at teatime on a slice of a very strong hard cheese. traveling in Bashkiria as a student, I fell in love with their dense white buckwheat honey, and the way they spread it generously over a thick slice of a Swiss-style local cheese.

Marchall's farms suggest paring their honey with a blue cheese, but I don't want to deal with the mess. So here were are, pairing a French Comte with California sage honey and white tea. You can try this with an off-dry German Riesling too.

Other suggestions for cooking with honey:
- Mix 1 Tbsp honey, 1 Tbsp Olive oil, 1 tsp Worchestershire sauce dash of Tabasco, 1 tsp ground black pepper. Use to marinate beef or chicken for the grill.

- Use a mixture of 2 Tbsp honey, 1 tsp dry mustard, juice of 1 lemon, salt and pepper as a rub for grilled chicken breasts

- For a tasty slaw, dress 2 cups shredded cabbage and 1/2 cup shredded carrot with 1 Tbsp honey, 1 Tbsp olive oil, juice of 1 lemon, salt and pepper; mix well.

- Parboil young carrots, turnips, rutabagas until almost tender. Sauté in butter, glaze with honey and balsamic vinegar

- Use instead of sugar to sweeten Turkish coffee

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:San Rafael, CA

September fruit, cheese and wine pairing

Fruit: Black Mission figs
Cheese: Chevre rolled in fine herbs
Wine: Beringer Knights Valley Alluvium Blanc 2008

Summer, I'll miss you! Long sunny days. The pool. Grilling in the park. Sitting outside on a warm evening, with the stars above me and a glass of chilled Sauvignon Blanc in front of me. Heirloom tomatoes. Bell peppers. Spot prawns with mango salsa. Peaches, nectarines, pears, melons. I'll even miss the zucchinis, no matter how tired of them I feel now. But most of all I'll miss the figs.

You just cannot get figs out of season: they have to be picked very ripe, they don't keep, and they don't travel. The season is short, and it is now.




Like all fruits, the only food created by the nature that was designed to be eaten, figs are great when you just eat them out of the basket. However, they really shine paired with cheese and wine.




I have selected Beringer Alluvium Blanc for it's fruitiness and chewy texture, not unlike my figs. The wine is deep golden color, it smells of exotic flowers and sweet citrus, and the taste is lush and tropical. And it has a hint of fig! Composed mostly of Sauvignon Blanc and Semillion grapes and aged in oak, it has a creamy start and a long, spicy and herbal aftertaste.



A soft goat cheese is a natural partner for the figs. Usually, I don't like any flavorings on my cheese, but for this pairing I picked a Chevre rolled in fine herbs, to honor the herbal character of the Sauvignon Blanc in the wine. And the wine supports it perfectly!



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:San Rafael, CA

French Kiss party at de Young Museum

De Young Museum in Golden Gate Park is hosting an impressionist exibition from Musee d'Orsay that runs through the summer, and tonight, for the French national holiday, Bastille Day celebration, the museum had a "French Kiss" party, with food, wine, music, performances, and access to the exibition.

I went to the party for the impressionists - I miss d'Orsay badly, last time I went there was 5 year ago, and I don't know when I'll have a chance to go again, - and to meet a friend. Guess what? My friend got sick and called me at the last moment to tell me she's not coming!
So I was left on my own with food, wine, music, performances, and the impressionists. For different reasons, I couldn't take pictures of the paintings and the music. I don't know why I never thought to take a picture of the go-go dancers or the wonderful mime who went through the crowd and interacted with everyone she saw in mimics and gesture, or of the Pernod bar. May be because I'm a food blogger. So all you get here is pictures of food.
After sampling a few mini-quiches and crudites, I got to the dessert station, and was about to take a picture and leave tasting for later, when the Maître d' went by and said: "If you only try one dessert tonight, make it the coffee bean truffle." I took one right away. It was heaven. (That's the darkest ones in the photo)

20 minutes later all the coffee bean truffles were gone. I sampled the cocoa and pistachio truffles later, they were good, but not even close to the amazing coffe bean.

There were a few people I know at the party. It appears that all the same people go to the same places.

J., a beatiful sunny kid of my friend's friend, who hikes, skies, and is generally one of us, and whom I just meet at a party last weekend, was there with her buddies.

I didn't know that Maxx, one of my dear salsa dancing partners, works for Marin French Cheese Company, but there he was, slicing the cheeses for tasting. His was one of the busiest tables at the party, but we were still able to chat about favorite bands and clubs, while he served the cheeses.


My salsa dancing crowd is one of the best foodie crowds so far.


I've already met a bread baker and a cheesemonger on the dance floor.


Now, I cannot wait to dance with a winemaker.

Happy Bastille day!

June Heat

So, what do you cook when it's 100 degrees outside? I don't. Chill some fresh fruits from the market, chill the white wine, slice the cheese, set everything out in the sunshine for long enough to take a picture - this will bring the cheese (and the wine) to "room" temperature. Move into the shade, put an ice cube in the wine, try to eat.

Then, if the temperature drops to the comfortable 90-ies, slice the eggplant, summer squashes and spring onions, brush with olive oil, salt and pepper, and grill. Shower, then eat.

There is no recipe in this post.

Wine and Cheese by the Bay

In our never ending quest for new and interesting foods (and driven by my curiosity to explore different farmers markets), we went all the way to the tiny town of Point Reyes Station, that has a market on Saturday morning. The market turned out to be very small, containing more useless stuff than food, and the sleepy little town, populated completely by Marin Inhabitants Type II (hippie-environment-meditation-spiritual-vegetarian-marijuana) failed to impress. That is, until we saw the sign. The sign was attached to a large barn next to the town center, and it read "Cowgirl Creamery". The famous creamery that in the nineties started the fashion for artisan cheeses in the US, and that still supplies the best cheese courses to the fanciest restaurants in San Francisco and beyond, was right here, in the barn in front of us. In we went.

The interior of the barn is divided into a glass enclosure where they make the cheese, and a cheese shop. In the shop, they sell their own cheeses as well as cheeses from all over the States and Europe.

We got a mild-tasting Carmody from Sonoma for the FatCat™ and a strong Cowgirl Creamery's Red Hawk for myself. They also have a grilled sandwich counter in the shop, but we didn't have time for a sandwich. We were on our way to the cute village of Inverness, on Tamales Bay, for a picnic of wine and cheeses.