#30 | Disco Drinking 🕺
Square 🍕in a 🍳 Pan
Hello!
This is the thirtieth edition of EAT.DRINK.THINK., a weekly survey of the most interesting food media on the web with a handful of social posts thrown in for good measure.
Judging by the number of click-throughs, our Edible Pursuit true/false questions have proved to be enormously popular, so this week we’re upping the ante and introducing multiple-choice to the mix as well. Find them at the end of this newsletter 👇
By the way, I'm Bruce Cole, Publisher of Edible San Francisco. If you’re new, welcome! You're getting this email because you subscribed. If you'd like to hop off anytime, simply unsubscribe. I appreciate you reading this newsletter. But first, let’s eat.
EAT
#Protip: steam your rice. Whenever we make fried rice from leftovers, there are always dried out and stuck together clumps that never seem to break up in the pan (#annoying). Steph and Chris from our favorite YouTube cooking channel Chinese Cooking Demystified show how to solve that problem ☝️ by parboiling rice first, then steaming it, resulting in perfectly cooked, separate grains of rice for frying. In other words, you don’t even need leftovers to make proper fried rice, you just need the right technique!
Do you want chicken with that? Are 40 cloves of garlic too many? Mel Magazine
If you dare: Pink mac-n-cheese for your sweetheart on Valentine’s Day. CNN
Square pizza in a round pan: we were going to jump on the Detroit-style pizza train, but didn’t have a square pan. 🤔 Pivoted to cast iron with this recipe from Serious Eats and wow! As advertised, crisp-bottomed crust, thick, soft and puffy (trademarks of the Detroit-style). Going to slide it into the monthly dinner rotation.
The recap:
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DRINK
2019 Randle Vineyard "Disco!" Sauvignon Blanc/Semillon
We’ve had a love affair with semillon since we first started drinking wine in the early 80’s while living in Santa Cruz. Our house was just around the corner from the beloved Shoppers Corner market, which featured a long wall of wines, many of which came from local producers. There were always multiple varieties from Ridge wines on hand, but we were especially drawn to those from Ahlgren Vineyards, primarily because of the handwritten labels, and semillon seemed exotic and wasn’t chardonnay. We probably drank many cases of that wine over the years, and it always accompanied our default menu for dinner guests: Stouffers (frozen) spaghetti alfredo served with raw spinach on top (in theory to balance out the gazillion calories from the pasta), a buttered sourdough roll from Emily’s Bakery and a glass of Ahlgren semillon.
You don’t see many California semillons on the shelves as the grape variety isn’t widely grown. It’s best known for its use in Bordeaux blends and it’s a popular variety in Australia as well. West coast winemaker Erin Pooley, who hails from down under, produces one of our favorite California versions.
All this to say that whenever we see the variety on shelves we’re going to grab a bottle, and we spotted this 2019 Randle Vineyard "Disco!" Sauvignon Blanc/Semillon at new Guss’s Community Market on Noriega, which has an expanded the wine collection since moving down the block from the former Noriega Produce location.
While it’s a blend of sauvignon blanc and semillon, a la Bordeaux Blanc, it still swings into our wheelhouse with semillon’s trademark zippy acidity and creamy texture. There’s a big burst of citrus at first sip with noticeable grapefruit and lemon notes, which round out into a supple honeyed body. It’s an expressive, tightly focused wine, and at 12.8% ABV, makes for easy drinking on these unseasonably warm winter days.
Alex Pomerantz of Subject to Change tells us that the grapes from this blend come from Edward and Deborah Wallow’s vineyards in the Yorkville Highlands AVA. The vines were planted in the early ’80s and were some of the first CCOF certified vineyards in California. Half of the fruit for this bottling was direct-pressed, fermented and aged in a neutral barrel for 5 months. The other half undergoes two weeks of carbonic maceration before being pressed into stainless for 5 months.
As for disco? Pomerantz says: “We call the wine Disco! because who doesn't love some disco? It's fun and groovy, classic but was alternative and edgy in its time. This wine is full of soul, can be fun or serious, our edgy take on a classic style (bordeaux blanc).”
Cue the Bee Gees!
Survey says: everyone knows, or at least assumes, that drinking coffee will make up for lost sleep. But now there’s science behind that sentiment. Sprudge
#Protip: Ina Garten says frozen Palomas are perfect for your Superbowl menu. You can make them in advance and keep them in the freezer, which means you won’t miss a second of Tom Brady beating Patrick Mahomes (our prediction, not hers).
On chai and Dubai: The South Asian spiced tea drink is ubiquitous in Dubai, with Chai shops dotting every neighborhood in the city, from the grittiest warehouse districts to the glitzy shopping districts. Vidya Balachander notes the advice given to her by a cab driver, “Never drink chai in a restaurant,” and sets out to discover how “nondescript establishments have elevated the somewhat pedestrian process of brewing chai into a veritable art form.” Vittles
Chatter: everyone chimed in on this
SF Chronicle wine columnist Esther Mobley speculates that it could have been a bottle of Screaming Eagle Cabernet Sauvignon but was most likely one of these treasures: 1926 Chateau Latour at $13,500, 1945 Chateau Margaux at $12,500, or the 1959 Chateau Lafite-Rothschild at $12,000. SF Chronicle
THINK
Breaking: Senate Overwhelmingly Passes Restaurant Relief Program dedicating $25 billion specifically to the restaurant industry. Food & Wine
Bring a large pot of water to a boil: Ben Mims, the cooking columnist for the Los Angeles Times, weighs in on how and why they are improving the user-friendliness of recipes.
Related: looking back at James Beard’s Delights and Predjudices where the recipes are composed in paragraph form (without lists of ingredients and instruction steps) as a nod towards cooks who knew their way around the kitchen. The Takeout
#Protip: always mise and don’t forget to read the recipe. Really! New York Times
Culinary grammar: I have hunger for hambagoo. Atlas Obscura
A meal in three acts: on becoming a chef and growing up Chinese American. Goldthread
The mirage of Mexican food: While we pine for its authentic cuisine, the pursuit of it haunts Mexican chefs, too. BBC
Where everybody knows your name: Paolo Lucchesi on the disappearing neighborhood diner, with a spotlight on New Taraval Cafe. Update: sadly NTC is closing indefinitely 😢
Black History Month: I'm Just a Layman in Pursuit of Justice. Black farmers and the fight against the USDA.
🐔 Noted and quoted: “Alt-meat speculators want to save the world—or get rich trying. In December, Eat Just, the volatile startup formerly known as Hampton Creek famous for its eggless mayo, received a historic green light to sell lab-grown chicken in Singapore.” The Baffler
SPOTTED 👀
EDIBLE PURSUIT 🤔
Test your food knowledge!
1. Which restaurant was the first to boast San Francisco's wood-fired pizza oven?
A. Zuni Café
B. Tomasso's
C. Rose Pistola
2. True or False: scientists have taught spinach plants to send emails.
3. In the 1950s, Islais Creek in the Bay View district was home to one of the world’s largest food processing centers. Which was it?
A. A slaughterhouse
B. A sardine cannery
C. A coffee roaster
4. While we’re in the neighborhood, from which fruit is copra obtained? Hint: the food industry that processed this fruit was also formerly located at Islais Creek.
A. Carambola
B. Rambutan
C. Coconut
5. True or False: spaghetti and meatballs are a traditional Italian dish.
ICYMI: Here’s our February Spotify dinner jams playlist. This month's list includes a mix of covers, starting off with a bouncy José James take on a Billy Joel classic. Also, a nod to Bay Area legend Tommy Guerrero's latest release and some chill vibes from Xinxin.
That’s all for this week.
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We’re outta here. Be well and take care,
–Bruce
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