AficioNada

November 1^st marked my one-year anniversary here in the valley. As I looked back over this rich, overwhelming year – tasting wines with Caymus Vineyards’ Chuck Wagner, sweating in Bouchon’s famous kitchen, studying wine with Karen MacNeil, punching grapes with Ric Forman, walking the edges of the Santa Cruz Mountains with Paul Draper – I realized that my most precious memories started nine weeks ago. It was on another Saturday – in September – that I was introduced to a group of fellow SEC transplants tucked up in this 30-mile stretch of wineland.

Since being introduced to them, I have spent nearly every weekend at what I affectionately call SEC Headquarters-West. With each Saturday, my infatuation with the “California Culinary Elite” diminishes and my passion for Southern tradition, hospitality and – of course – food intensifies. I wake up thinking about collard greens. I hover over my mailbox waiting for my next issue of Garden & Gun. I suddenly want to cloak everything with buttermilk. It is impossible to ignore the siren call of fried pickles, biscuits and gravy, thick coffee, bacon waffles, black-eyed peas, boiled peanuts and 12 to 14 back-to-back hours of football. I don’t even try to resist.

Nestled in this bubble of Southern comfort, I realized that while I started this blog to celebrate Napa Valley’s food and wine visionaries, over the last few months it has also become my poem to the South. It helps that I have been introduced to some incredible Southern cooks right here in Northern California.  These are true culinary craftsmen, skillet-wielding individuals who would much rather see their handiwork devoured than lionized. Or photographed, which is why some of my photos, snapped on the fly, may be a bit blurry.

One such craftsman currently lives at SEC HQ-West.  For a time Clayton Lewis had a Southern-inspired restaurant in Napa called The Carriage House. Now he’s playing for the wine team, and only lucky friends get to experience his cookin’ on a regular basis. Clayton’s food is like the thick quilts my stepmom used to bring home from Mennonite auctions – hand pieced, exquisitely detailed and deliciously soul warming.  In fact, it was a meal of cornbread-crusted hamhocks that inspired the title for this post. 

It is that meal that I'd like to share with you now. Last night, we tried to reconstruct what was originally an off-the-cuff concept. Like its name, the recipe’s a bit abstract. Here’s what we came up with…

Deconstructed Southern Love, The Recipe:

Take your leftover Marie Callender’s cornbread stuffing, crumble and freeze it. Buy ham hocks, shanks or some form of ham on the bone. Braise it overnight. Let it cool. Pull it apart. Form into small rounds with a biscuit cutter and freeze. Pull out your cornbread and meat and let thaw slightly. Add a little liquid (Clayton used a mix of Tabasco and egg) into the corn bread to make it more adhesive.  Spread a layer of cornbread on the top and bottom of each round. Place these miniature “sandwiches” on a cookie sheet and bake for ten or 15 minutes in order to reset the cornbread. Clayton did not give me an exact temperature but I would guess somewhere around 400 to 425 degrees would be about right. This will help the sandwiches set quickly. We served ours with demi-glace over black-eyed peas. A variety of sauces, like a mustard-based Carolina ‘cue sauce, would fare well with this dish.

If you prefer more concrete instruction in your kitchen, here’s a recipe for Bacon and Sweet Corn Pancake Batter that Chef Joey Pesner was kind enough to share with me. Pesner is the Executive Chef at The Cliffs, a resort and community tucked up in the Carolina Preserve at the edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Pesner sources much of his food from an organic garden just a few quick strides from his restaurant, La Bastide (much of their meat also comes from animals raised on the preserve).  I met Chef Pesner a few months ago at a Greenville food and wine festival called EuPhoria. He and his team were serving these savory-sweet cakes buffet style along with a dozen other restaurants. It is exceptionally difficult for a kitchen staff to show their skills in a buffet "tasting." Ingredients wilt, and the already dished up foods - on paper plates - grow cold. These sand dollar-sized charmers stole the show. I was surprised by their goodness. I think you will be, too.

The Sweet Corn Cakes:

Sift one cup of AP flour, two and a half teaspoons of baking powder, a tablespoon of sugar and a half teaspoon of salt. Then add one cup of yellow stone-ground cornmeal. Combine mixed ingredients with two eggs and one and three-quarter cups of milk. Give it a few strokes and then add a quarter cup of melted baking fat.

At Euphoria, Chef Pesner added fresh corn, chives and then chopped finely cooked bacon into the batter before pouring them on the griddle. He served it with Southern creamed chicken, and we all thanked him for it!

I will continue to pay homage to the winemakers, chefs, farmers, restaurateurs, sommeliers and cellar workers of this tiny valley. But don’t be surprised to find more and more of these pages filled with songs and sighs dedicated to the flesh-y foods of the South. And to those who create them!

PS – In addition to our SEC-West resident chef, we also have an in-house somm who provides the house with enough vino (and other libations) to fill an above-ground swimming pool. When I asked him what he thought would marry well with Clayton’s Southern Love, he didn’t even blink before stating what he thought was the obvious, “Big, Slutty California Pinot.” We hope Clayton – and California – doesn’t take offense.

The nights are lengthening, November’s rainy chill has gotten into my bones, and brazen, silky Pinot Noir just sounds so right. Here are a few options:

1.     2006 Belle Glos Las Alturas Pinot Noir: This wine from the sunny southern end of the Santa Lucia Highlands is all ripe blackberries, dried game and smoke. Deliberately rich, it’s flagrant without falling into floozy territory.

2.     2004 Siduri Wines’ Pisoni Vineyard Pinot Noir: Another vineyard on the southern end of the Santa Lucia Highlands, it is one of Monterey County’s most famous. And the wines from one of Pisoni Vineyard’s many vineyard blocks are also famously ripe, lingering and fruit-filled. As Rhett, our SEC Wine Director says, “Pretty much anything from the Pisoni Vineyard is going to involve high-end calls girls in pricing and presentation.”

3.     2007 Lutea Russian River Valley Pinot Noir: Rhett says this wine “is not super slutty, but it’s damn good juice.” Plus, Suzanne Hagins is a Savannah/Charleston gal, and her wine is named after the American lotus, which is native to the southeastern US.

4.     2006 Lioco “Indica” Mendocino Red: It’s not a Pinot, but I finally got to taste this wine with proprietor Matt Licklider. This is seriously juicy old vine Carignane blended with a tiny bit of Petite Sirah that smells like violets, tastes like cherries and blueberries and has a slightly savory underbelly to keep it all in check. Sounds like ham hock pairing heaven to me!