Champagne and Caviar tasting

25LUSK is a French restaurant in San Francisco which offers nice ambiance and great food.

Recently, they held a Caviar and Champagne pairing party.
There were 5 Champagne, and each was served with their new caviar dish.

Ruinart was paired with Yellowtail Ceviche and Caviar with Avocado Mousse.
The flavor was as good as its presentation.
Sharpness of seafood's salt and richness of Avocado matched really well.

Ruinart Rose was served with Sturgeon Caviar on Smoked Sturgeon. Two different flavors from Sturgeon.

Oyster and Trout Caviar with Citrus Dressing was for Dom Perignon 2004.
The fresh acidity of citrus worked really well with the seafood, but it could have been a little too strong for the wine.

Dom Perignon 2006 Rose was served with Bacon Cheddar Grilled Cheese with Caviar.
The bacon flavor was refreshing after panoply of seafood. Of course it was great with the wine.

Sommelier Cezar. He is like a big brother to JC.
Great guy, and funny.

The last but not least was Dom Perignon P2 1998.
P2 is a series which releases wine at the peak of its energy.
To me, P2 had more bamboo like freshness than intense energy.

This was paired with Blini with Caviar and Creme Fraiche.
Of course they were great together, but I happened to try the Oyster with Citrus Dressing, whose acid was a little bit too strong for 2004, and P2 together. It was a great pairing.
P2 didn't overpower the delicate flavor of seafood, but wasn't overwhelmed by the strong acid. They complemented each other.
At first, I felt more greenness (good way) than yeast autolysis quality and thought P2 was refreshing kind of wine, but it actually was a great food wine.

Bento Prep

JC needs to bring Bento lunch a couple of times a week.
Although he doesn't leave house so early, I'm not a morning person and tend to make mistakes when I'm in a hurry, so I like to prepare the day before.

There are vegetable dishes called Joubi-sai, which is a kind of preserved food, can be made in advance and kept for some days.
Here's one of them:

Spinach with Peanut butter Sauce
First, make peanuts sauce. 
Mix 1 TS.(Table Spoon) crunchy peanut butter,
1 ts.(tea spoon) soy-sauce, 
1 ts. Mirin (sweet cooking sake) and a pinch of sugar.

Adjust the saltiness and sweetness to your preference but don't make it too light because you mix this with spinach later. 

Steam spinach, wash and squeeze water out really well, then cut.

Mix spinach and peanut sauce.
Done!

All the measurement is approximate since I don't measure condiments when I cook.

Another one is Burdock marinated in Sweet Vinegar.

First, mix half a cup of vinegar, half a cup of Dashi (Japanese stock), 1 TS. sugar, 1 TS. soy-sauce and a pinch of salt.

When I need to use only little bit of Dashi, I use instant.

Clean burdock and roughly julienne them.

Boil water. Drop 1 TS. of vinegar in it and cook burdock for a couple of minutes.

Drain water and throw burdock while they are still hot into the vinegar mixture.

Marinate over night. Done.

Most of Japanese supermarkets carry burdock, I think.

In the morning, I just cook fried rice (with Takana pickles and egg), saute sausage and cherry tomatoes in salt, pepper and dried herbs.

Fill the empty space with pumpkins from last night and blackberry from backyard.

It seems like that Japanese are known for cute Bento making. 

Unfortunately, I'm not one of them.  

However, I believe that the most important thing is if there is enough nutrition, and I think I did OK with this one. 

By the way, Joubi-sai is not just for Bento.

I like to have one or two of them in the fridge always so I can eat vegetable whenever I want.

Sashimi lunch with wine

The biggest obstacle of living abroad is food, I guess.
I'm lucky to live in Bay Area (around San Francisco) because there are a lot of Japanese supermarkets here.
Especially the one called Tokyo Fish Market carries not only Japanese packaged food and vegetables, but also sashimi quality fish, sometimes imported directly from Tsukiji (the biggest fish market in Tokyo).

Thanks to them, we regularly enjoy sashimi at home.

The right side is Hamachi, and the left side is Buri.
They are both yellowtail. Buri is adult yellowtail, Hamachi is younger yellowtail.
There is an idea called Syusse-uo (literally means Fish who climbs up the social ladder) in Japan: fish change their name as they grow up.

JC sliced sashimi with his Aritsugu (sashimi knife).
We had Hamachi with wasabi and soy-sauce, and Buri with olive oil, lemon, and salt.

The wine was Mas Champart Saint-Chinian 2014.
It is blend and I think there is Viognier in it because it had oily texture.
That texture went good with fatty Buri and olive oil.

HOPSY in Albany

HOPSY is a beer store in Albany who mostly deals with local craft beer. They deliver local beer to the local customers.

Their main concept is to connect micro breweries with customers who are too busy to go and find hidden gems.
And they don't just sell beer. To keep the gems shining, they have breweries directly pour beer into their own 32oz. growlettes, and deliver them to customers within few days so that the beer is still fresh when it's delivered.
This sounds like a lot of work, but I once had beer right out of the tank at a brewery and it was delicious! so I understand their unwillingness to make compromise on freshness.

Although they mainly do delivery service, the store carries more than 20 selections of beer, which is more than enough for beer novice like me.
People there were knowledgeable and helpful, so I didn't need to be intimidated.

We opened one of the beer we bought the day. Double IPA(I confess I don't know what IPA means).
It was rich. "I want to sit down and slowly drink this with food" kind of beer.

You can keep this cute growlette, or you bring this back to the store and get $1 discount for the next purchase.

Pepper Cone Chocolate

Chocolate from Un Dimanche a Paris: the left bottle is pepper cones wrapped in dark chocolate; the right bottle is pink pepper cones wrapped in white chocolate.

A friend living in France sent them for me.
This chocolatier doesn't only make unique chocolate, but also serves food with chocolate at their restaurant.
My friend told me that they used the pink chocolate for salmon dish, so JC and I decided to recreate it.

This is Salmon en Papillote with Mustard Mayonnaise Sauce and Pink Chocolate by JC.
He cooked everything, but I at least grew the parsley.

The fat from salmon, the sourness from tomato and mayonnaise, sweetness and spiciness from chocolate, all of them were integrated well and the dish tasted great although I had no idea how close or how far this was from the original recipe.

The chocolate tastes good just by itself, too. The sweetness comes first then the spice really kicks in, so each of the chocolates is small but don't swallow a bunch of them.

Cheese called Nevat

One of our favorite pastimes is food shopping.
We don't usually make a shopping list: we do this more for surprise or new discovery.
Of course it sometimes results in disappointment, but at least it is something new!

This is Spanish cheese we found during the shopping. Something new. I'd never seen this cheese before.

The white cheese on the left is the Goat milk cheese called Nevat.
This fat round shape cheese is from Cataluna.
Soft, lightly milky delicate flavor. I liked this cheese very much!
So today's pastime ended with positive result. Good.
The yellow color cheese is cow cheese from Washington state, called Sleeping Beauty!

JC opened a bottle of wine for this cheese and gave me as blind.

High acid, medium-bodied, lime, grapefruit, white flower, green bell pepper.
My conclusion was Sauvignon Blanc from Loir.

The answer was: Regis Minet Pouilly Fume 2014

I wish I could have narrowed down my conclusion, but with my experience, which is none, I guess I did good.

It was great pairing: the wine didn't overpower the delicate flavor of cheese, so I could enjoy both wine and cheese.

Cold Holiday Weekend

It was an Independence day weekend. There were events and fireworks, but I didn't feel like being active because it was COLD!
It's not rare to have fog and cool weather around this time of the year, but it was especially cold this weekend.
So, we just stayed home and opened wine.

The wine we chose was MICHEL & STEPHANE OGIER COTE-ROTIE 2007.
We decanted it for half a day but should have opened earlier, even the day before: you could tell that this wine had good quality, but was still closed.
Most of the wine was saved for the next day. This time, it was full of fruits, flowers and spices. Gorgeous.

JC cooked Chicken Chasseur to pair with the wine.  He used sour cream, not cream, so the flavor was rich but not heavy.  I liked this version.

We ended our holiday with  a cocktail: Peach Bourbon Sour.
JC made peach bourbon by soaking peach skin, sugar and black pepper in bourbon for 2 days.
The spiciness of the black pepper was subtle, but gave a real kick.  

Recreating Chartreuse Swizzle

JC made me a cocktail: Chartreuse Swizzle

I'm not a big fan of the liqueur with strong herb flavor like Chartreuse or Absinthe, but this cocktail has a perfect balance between the sweetness of liqueur and herbaceousness. Love it!

The ingredients are:

Chartreuse

Velvet Falernum

Pineapple juice

Lime

This is an original cocktail from Smuggler's Cove's bartender, Marco. He won a Chartreuse contest with this cocktail some year's ago.

Smuggler's Cove is the coolest bar in San Francisco. Like Disneyland for adult. Ambiance and cocktails, both of them are fun and sophisticated. Highly recommended!