Category Archives: Product Reviews
Artisan Cheese Festival Recap
The cheese festival wrapped up on Sunday with a marketplace tasting of mostly local northern California artisan cheeses and foods with a small selection of artisans from Washington, Oregon, and Utah. Here are the highlights:
Cheeses:
Achadinha Cheese Co.- The Capricious is an aged goat cheese and one of my favorites that I always have around.
Beehive Cheese Co.- From Utah and known for there Barely Buzzed cheese that is rubbed with espresso and lavender.
Cowgirl Creamery- Always making great cheeses with the seasonal St. Pat available now and the consistently great stinky and gooey Red Hawk.
Cypress Grove- Famous for there Humboldt Fog. I also tasted the Truffle Tremor that would be great stirred into a mushroom risotto.
Shamrock Artisan Cheese- A very nice plain goat cheese from Willits in Mendocino County.
Willapa Hills Farmstead Cheese- From Washington with a nice selection of blue cheeses. I liked Pluvius The Rain Maker, an aged cow milk cheese.
Other Consumables
Cassata-Sonoma Olive Oil- California first cold pressed Extra Virgin Olive Oil.
Creminelli Fine Meats- Casalingo and Sopressata Salami.
Dutton-Goldfield- A great Pinot Noir producer.
Poco Dolce Chocolates- Bittersweet chocolates with sea salt.
Salute Santé Grapeseed Oil- Great for sautéing and adding a light flavor to foods.
Cookbook Of The Year: 2010
I received a great cookbook as a Christmas present this year called “Noma: Time and Place in Nordic Cuisine” from René Redzepi. René’s Restaurant Noma in Copenhagen has been getting great reviews and has been nominated one of the top 10 restaurants in the world by numerous publications. The ingredients are very local and indigenous to Nordic cuisine making them nearly impossible to source and the recipes difficult to attempt to cook, but the pictures in the book are gorgeous to look at.
Review: “Chef’s Press”
The latest kitchen gadget that I have been testing out is the “Chef’s Press”, 9-oz. weights that are used for weighting down food while cooking or marinating. These weights are sold exclusively at Williams-Sonoma in sets of three and are designed by Bay Area chef Bruce Hill.
The Things I Like: The weights are nicely designed to easily stack on top of each other for extra needed weight or you can overlap them to cover more surface area. They also interlock nicely for convenient storage. The vented holes are great for letting the steam escape and allowing the food items to get a nice sear or great grill marks.
The Things I Don’t Like: High and Low. The price is high and the weight is low. 9 oz. seems a little light for most items that I’m cooking and at $25 for a set of three the price seems a bit steep to have a large collection on hand. Cleaning takes a little bit of scrubbing to get all of the grease off.
