Hot Off The Press

This is one of two gorgeous photographs Erin Kunkel shot at Barndiva

for the April edition of Smithsonian Magazine's much anticipated

Ten Best Small Towns to visit in America

.  Healdsburg is #2 on the list, noted for "Food and Living."  The writer nominates Wendell Berry as Healdsburg's patron saint, which gets my vote, but it took me a moment to get my head around us being "farm-to-table via nirvana, a sophisticated culture of nourriture that would have astonished 19th-century food philosopher Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin." The image of Savarin trumbling down Center Street brought a chuckle, but I had to look up nourriture. Turns out it's not far off what we've been saying all along:

mange le terrior

!  Check out the entire article here:

20 Best Small Towns to Visit in 2014

First Weeks of Spring

Poets wax romantic about Spring, but I love Margaret Atwood’s line best: ” in the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.”

There’s no substitute for digging in it, but even if you aren’t so inclined, just get out there and wander. The smell of Spring will seep into your soul. For weeks now at the farm (and all around town) trees and vines and even the most ordinary curbside plants have been bursting into leaf and flower. It's Nature just doing it's thing, but to the human heart this has got to be as close as we get to Irrepressible Joy.

All text Jil Hales. Photos © Jil Hales

Wednesday at the Barn Menu + Dish of the Week: Braised Oxtail with Lobster + Photos of the Porchetta Roast!

Braised Kobi Oxtail & Lobster Claw Fricassée  w/ Chanterelles, Harvest Vegetables & Yukon Gold Potato Tots

We eat to nourish and sustain ourselves, but for the most part we've all been trained to look at images of food to be aroused. In this respect there is little difference between commodity chains like Red Lobster and upscale magazines like Martha Stewart Cooking: the production of images that have been set-designed and stage lit to beautify and romanticize what we eat. In order to meet what are essentially market driven expectations, photographers increasingly try to avoid what a food stylist friend once described as “the icky bits of cooking.”

Which makes the job of producing a curious little food blog like ours somewhat conflicted. Two weeks ago our bookkeeper was passing the computer when she caught sight of an image we had up on the screen of a whole, uncooked octopus. It was gray, wet, limp, about the size of a small child ~ by any stretch the definition of unappetizing. “God, I wish I hadn’t seen that," she shrieked. "I’m not sure I can ever eat octopus again.” Least you get the wrong impression, our bookkeeper is no wimp. She is ex-navy with five children. But as it’s hardly the intent of a restaurant blog that touts the talents of its omnivorous kitchen to turn people off ~ and turn her off it did ~ after some discussion we took the easy way out, choosing a close-up of one graceful tentacle, brined a rich merlot red. But I haven’t written a blog since.

Because I haven’t found a way out what's become an ongoing dilemma. I love gorgeous images of food as much as the next guy, and happily my life is full of them. But that's not always what I see when I look through my lens each week as I set out to document a dish through the laborious stages it takes on its journey to the plate. And what I see has increasingly led me to believe that it's precisely this narrow definition of what constitutes ‘beautiful’ and "exciting" that inhibits us from exploring anything that can't be photoshopped into submission or reduced to copy the length of a long tweet. Because it's in the icky bits that the best flavors slumber, needing to be coaxed, step by step, to reveal themselves.

There are a lot of icky bits in nose to tail cooking ~ starting with a whole (dead) animal. But if you’ve been reading this blog at all you know that the intricate and loving steps we take to properly cook animal proteins is a huge part of what we do. It flows from the pleasure we get from eating everything that comes our way, nose to tail (if they have one), which is measured by a relationship with animals based upon respectful dependence: eating animals after they’ve lived a good life honors and engenders the bio-dynamic precepts of farming we hold most dear.

This week’s dish started with a decidedly ungainly looking animal part, the tail of an Ox. Serpentine, mostly bone and sinew, this off-cut has surprisingly little meat. It took four days to render the tail into one of the most delicious dishes I've had all year (including a full day to let the flavors develop). Check it out:

From the brining of the tail overnight there followed protracted stages: mincing vegetables and roasting bones for the veal stock, flouring and searing off the Oxtail before adding it to an all day braise, straining and clarifying the stock and the finished sauce (six times that I counted), peeling, boiling, puréeing, forming, and deep frying the Yukon Golds for the tater tots, cracking and steaming the lobster claws, peeling, paring and cooking each vegetable for the final dish. Raw meat, grease, mounds of uncooked vegetables ~ there was not one vanity shot. The drying of chanterelles, which we do in the garden, was indeed pretty, but didn’t feel an essential part of the dish. The bi-product of the only truly dramatic moment ~ Chef pouring a magnum of red wine over the meat and vegetables and igniting them, the room exploding in a foresty, primal smoke that stroked a curious longing in me ~ was a smell.

To coax a sweet, rich, tiny bundle of meat out of that Oxtail took immense concentration with a surfeit of heat, sweat, blood and guts. (Not just of an animal variety.) What we do may not always look pretty until we get to the finished plate, but at the end of our very long days, it's the getting there that's truly fascinating. As least that's what I've come to believe, with the hope that you will too.

End of Summer Porchetta Roast: Friends and family celebrate the life of a pig named Denise.

Yes, Denise is a curious name for a pig, but when Lukka, Daniel and Olga were warned not to personalize their first experience of raising an animal for the table by naming it, they stood their ground: if they were going to raise a rare mule foot, build her an acre pen to root around in, schlepp vegetables the staff collected every day for her to eat, and see to it that she lived a pain free life up to and including the way she left it, then hell yes, it was going to be personal!

Naturally, when it came to deciding what to serve our staff and a few close friends at Barndiva’s end of year harvest celebration, all eyes turned to Denise.

To allow Ryan a night off, Dino Bugica, our good friend and undisputed porchetta master was called upon to look after the "main course."  If you are not conversant with the details of Porchetta, it’s a classic Italian preparation in which the body of a whole pig is de-boned, herb rubbed, then re-rolled up tight so the skin crisps as the meat slowly roasts into the melted fat. Dino used a simple fennel pollen, salt and pepper rub which enhanced the incredibly sweet, herbal notes of the meat.

For the rest of the meal, Daniel baked sublime muffins from a closely guarded family recipe and he and Olga roasted squash and potatoes from the gardens at the farm. Amber baked three stellar sweets: chocolate chip banana bread, sour cream forest berry muffins and incredible pumpkin pie brûlée. Lukka stocked the bar. Geoff helped carve. Though it wasn’t a pot luck, friends brought loads of other goodies ~ Dragonfly's beautiful salad was stellar ~ but most of all everyone arrived with tons of good will. It was a great afternoon of food, drink, and laughter, with kids running wild in the gardens until long after dark.

All text Jil Hales. All photos Jil Hales (unless otherwise noted.)

Wednesday at the Barn..... Chef's Mid-Summer Tasting Menu with Wine Notes From our Som...

Dish of the Week

A Mid-Summer Tasting Menu

There’s a big difference between the food snob who can bore you silly about the 24 course Omakase he had in Japan just last week and the diner who has yet to step up and put a single meal of his life in the hands of a talented chef, but I’m willing to bet that for most of us, cost, time, and the fear of disappointment does a juggling act in our heads whenever we come upon the Tasting Menu option. Because it’s expedient, restaurants insist an entire table order a Tasting Menu; it only takes one diner to say "I”ll pass" and the decision has been made for you. Which makes the growing success of Barndiva's Tasting Menu curiousier and curiouser. In a good way of course, but still…

Common sense implies that as Ryan’s reputation has grown, so too has the desire to follow a meal where he will take it if you let him. Chef is a very smart guy, secure in his talent, he knows that’s only part of the story. A gentle price and a shorter dance card, with fewer courses longer on taste also factor into making his Tasting Menu “OMG” (the most frequent description we read on the comment cards each week.) But while Ryan and the brigade take great pride in crafting sequential course dining that guides guests on a visually stunning, soulfully satisfying experience, the role sublime ingredients play is key to how far Chef (for that matter any chef, no matter how talented), can truly extend flavor.

Once upon a time the measure of a Tasting Menu was in how many courses the Chef sent out. Even if you didn't lose count during the meal, it was a recipe for a nice little food hangover the next day. Then there was a man I knew once who was convinced all menus were Tasting Menus, providing everyone at the table (his optimum number was four) ordered different things and paid special attention to dishes the chef was best known for. In awkward mouthfuls passed across the table (sounds like a server’s nightmare) I suppose he got some sense of a restaurant's oeuvre ~ but  I think this misses the point entirely as well. While there is certainly a 'greatest hits' aspect to a memorable Tasting Menu, it is, like the counting of plates, but a small part of their ineffable charm. Tasting Menus are first and foremost a celebration: of seasonality, of the beauty to be found in a parade of exquisite plates, of the art of building flavor profiles as courses unfold through calibrated beginnings, sustained middles, and multiple endings. When that end finally does come you should trundle off home in a mood of complete satiety bordering on joy.

Ryan’s touchstone is surprise ~ his own, as he pushes his boundaries, and the guest on the other side of the kitchen door, who really has only a cursory idea of what they will be eating. We print a different Tasting Menu each week, but it's little more than a literary enticement, one that can advise us on any allergies we need to avoid ~  it leaves more out, than in, by design. The fun is in giving up control, in stopping mid-conversation to ohh and ahh as another plate arrives. There should be just enough of each course to get you to the last bite wishing you had one bite more.

Timing is crucial. Tasting Menus are high wire acts: for the kitchen (especially our small kitchen), which has to concurrently contend with a full board of à la carte orders, and for the guest, seduced by a visual joy ride that attempts to raise the bar with each course as it explores, modulates and simply yet elegantly pulls out all the stops when it comes to taste, texture and aroma. Too many dishes delivered too fast and a diner can end up feeling they’ve spent the evening speed dating at MOMA. Too slow and you kill the momentum which should be building with each course. There should be just enough time to linger and memorialize the ingredients of each dish so when they appear again, like characters in a story whose personalities keep evolving, you make the connections. Incandescent melon flirts with crab in an amuse-bouche before taking a sexier approach, compressed with lemongrass, in a vibrant heirloom tomato salad Ryan calls "king of the summer." Squash, first encountered as a blossom in a delicate tempura over a creamy lobster risotto returns a few courses later stuffed Provinçial style, all garlicky crunch, sweet hot mustard, bright green herbs.

Seasonality is a major inspiration, but it should not be considered a mandate. A potato is a potato is a potato ~ delicious all year round. Drew’s pomme de terre can make you weep, pair it with crème de morel, tiny garlic chips and chive blossoms and you have rich, creamy, salty, earthy, sweet. Would it be wonderful in autumn or winter? Yes, but crowned with a perfect piece of halibut you have an ode to summer you will never forget.

In reviewing our Tasting Menus from the past year, I realize they are as much a journal of our days here at Barndiva as the blog. Someday we will look back and talk about Ryan’s Tasting Menus at Barndiva in 2012, the year baby Rylee was born, and know, for all the hard work it took .... good times.

A word about wine pairing the Tasting Menu: while we never forget Barndiva is in the heart of wine country, Brendan O'Donovan, a wonderful sommelier, is careful not to overwhelm dishes whose pedigree vintages may be remarkable on their own but neglect to take their cue from the food. Wine is paired with the dish, rather than the other way around. Connections are there if you look for them ~ in the July Tasting Menu, the fish course incorporates a vibrant Pinot reduction with the halibut, which Brendan complimented by a lighter Pinot in the glass (yes, Virginia, you can drink red with fish) allowing the next course ~ a rich grass fed beef filet ~ to be paired with a commanding bordeaux .

It’s all in the details, but they need to come naturally to the plate and the mouth. His notes for the July Tasting Menu are below.

With the Amuse: Azur Syrah Rosé, California 2011 Watermelon, Crispy Proscuitto, and Crab Salad? I can't think of anything I'd rather have than Azur Rosé. Light, dry, and crisp, this gorgeous wine made by Julien Fayard is a small production local gem. This wine is no afterthought; the vineyards are carefully chosen and the grapes are grown just to make a beautiful Rosé wine.

With the first course: Simmonet-Febvre 1er Cru Vaillons, Chablis 2009 Vaillons is sandwiched between the prestigious Grand Cru of Les Clos and the well-known Premier Cru Mountains. Showcasing a bright, clean style, this wine is 100% Chardonnay. It is an embodiment of a beautiful Chablis with notes of green apple, lemon peel and crushed oyster shell; a hint of fresh fennel on the finish sets this effort apart. This wine is a match made in heaven for the Lobster Risotto accentuated with crème fraîche.

With the second course: Navarro "Methode a l'Ancienne" Anderson Valley Pinot Noir 2007- A gorgeous wine from Navarro, their award-winning flagship Pinot displays light red fruits, silky tannins, and a pleasant earthy character reminiscent of Burgundy. It showcases some of the best of what Anderson Valley and our old friends at Navarro produce.  The earth notes play off of the chanterelles, while the bright fruits and background acidity show beautifully in contrast to the delicate white fish and sweet summer corn.

With the Third Course: Lasseter 'Paysage' Bordeaux Blend, Sonoma Valley 2008 This is the flagship wine from relative newcomer Lasseter Winery in Sonoma Valley. Their inaugural effort, this impressive wine is inspired by the wines of St. Emilion. Well balanced and food friendly, this Merlot-based wine truly reflects the French style. Paired with Filet of Beef and Squash Provençal, the dark fruit, tea and earth tones are a perfect compliment.

With the Fourth Course: Cossart-Gordon 10yr Bual Madeira Bual Madeira, while oft-overlooked, is a prize pairing with our Chocolate Bavarois. This fortified wine is only lightly sweet, not cloying as some dessert wines can be. The character of this wine, with notes of nuts, coconut, and chocolate is reminiscent of a fine tawny port. Lingering brandied fruit character pays delicate homage to the cherries and a note of sweet saltwater air plays well with the sprinkle of Maldon salt on the chocolate. The perfect finish to a evening of stunning wine and food.

Truffles are served with Coffee, Herbal Teas, and a wonderful selection of Digestifs.

Eat the View.

All text Jil Hales. All photos Jil Hales (unless otherwise noted.)

Dish of the Week: The Lazar Lissitzky Side Salad..... In the Gallery: Fashion for a Cure......

Dish of the Week

Filet Mignon & Ricotta- Egg Yolk Ravioli with "just a salad on the side"

Lazar “El” Lissitzky was one interesting dude, an architect, designer, photographer and typographer who lived between the Czar’s downfall and the rise of Communism in a little window of time when a humanist approach to the arts in Russia was allowed to flourish.  Though he played a role in some of the most revolutionary art movements catching wind in Europe at the time ~ developing Suprematism with Chagall, teaching in Germany with the Bauhaus ~ his lasting contribution was a unique visual language which considered the power of geometric form when projected into the third dimension. Alive today he’d probably be rich and famous at Pixar or Apple.

He was not, to my knowledge, ever a chef, nor does anything you read about him (except perhaps the fact that he once walked across Italy) indicate any interest in food beyond eating it. Yet I think about El a lot these days as I watch our dishes leave Barndiva’s kitchen.

How important is the way food looks to our enjoyment of eating it? Ryan is fond of saying we eat with our eyes first, but do we actually taste things differently depending on the way we perceive them? If a great landscape painting has the power to wake us up to the beauty of nature, does a beautiful plate of food help connect us ~ even subliminally ~ to the place where it was grown, the people who raised or grew it?

Pretentious looking food isn’t what I’m on about; a plate of “beautiful food” that makes no connection to taste ~ and through taste to a field or meadow or body of water ~ is as lost an opportunity as a painting appreciated for its technical prowess that does not have the power to move us toward a love of nature and from there, a desire to protect it.

Over the past year shooting Ryan’s food for Dish of the Week, while I’ve enjoyed writing about all the tricks and clicks that separate the amateur from the professional cook, I find I keep coming back this question. Lazar's language for art had a social context which for him ~ given the times ~ made it relevant. His theory posed that if the right connections were made between the components of "volume, mass, color, space and rhythm," the eye would make an emotional connection to the work which supplied a meaningful narrative, even when the work was 'abstract.' That was art, this is food, but in a curious way the sensory connection we bring to cooking and eating is also the dominate force that defines our relationship to it. We eat to live, but we also live to eat. And the vibrant life of vegetables, the texture of proteins, the delicate colors of edible flowers, the filigreed edges of herbs have all the same compositional resonance we respond to in a work of art. What's more, we don't experience food in a fine dining setting from the prescribed museum distance; we are an essential part of the process, bringing to the experience a crucial interactive piece.

Fine dining is a hybrid art using the physical picture plane of a small 3D canvas with the repetitive timing of a theatrical production. It takes an enormously disciplined aesthetic. As a performance art it starts with sourcing, moves through the precision of cutting, prep and a range of cooking techniques (with and without heat) to the minutes before presentation. Only then are the final 'colors' added 'backstage' in a moment of intense choreography that can make or break ~ within seconds ~ everything that's come before.

Think I'm crazy? Perhaps, but check out the visual appeal and the production values of what Ryan calls "a simple side salad" which we serve with the Filet Mignon and Ricotta-Egg Yolk Ravioli on the lunch menu: slivered dark heart carrots, red and gold beets, tiny toy box radishes, spicy micro sprouts and pineapple sage petals follow a sinuous line that transitions from raw to cooked ~ garlic confit, steamed baby carrots, artichoke hearts and pearl onions ~ halfway across the plate. What's interesting beyond the visual delight of the plating is the narrative arc of the dish, which manages to give equal billing to the salad and vegetables (and for crunch, two house-made lattice potato chips which look like they drifted onto the plate on a breeze) without upstaging the star of the show: a perfectly cooked Filet Mignon.

There are few things in life as satisfying to a carnivore as a forkful of charred steak flooded with glorious golden egg yolk, but the umani seduction we get from eating animal proteins does not necessarily need to rely on the amount of it we consume. Ryan's plating, beyond its visual appeal, also reflects this evolving consideration, and choices that stretch from the plate all the way back to how and where we source our food.

As much as I respect (and try to adhere) to Michael Pollen’s #1 rule: “eat food, not too much, mostly plants", I don't believe any directive ~ no matter how sensible ~ can teach us as much as an actual experience we feel connected to. Dining is a journey, the more visual the better. Our appreciation and joy should be something we build upon, one which grows with every bite we take. Barndiva was created from a desire to feed people delicious food, sourced sustainably, leaving them wanting to eat with us again. Like Lazar Lissitzky, who believed in transformative art ~ the idea that beyond the experience of looking lay connections which could effect a society of change ~ I’d like to think we are also part of a transformative food movement.

Art first, food first, or for us, any thoughtful combination in between.

Tour de Cure

Studio Barndiva is thrilled to be working with our good friends David and Nicole at Brush Salon to help host their Couture for the Cure Fashion Show on Sunday, April 22 in support of the American Diabetes Association. Entertainment for the evening will be an exciting runway show courtesy of four of Healdsburg's most popular shops: Susan Graf Limited, M Clothing, Outlander Men's Gear and Clutch. Before the show Barndiva will provide cocktails and hors d'ouvres, Vin Couture will be pouring wine ~ so don't be late. A live and silent auction will augment the runway show which will star local and professionals models with hair and make-up by the talented folks at Brush. Space is limited for this very special evening. Great night, important charity. We hope to see you here.

To make reservations for dinner after the show, call us at 707 431 0100, and mention the show. For tickets to the event, see below.

All text Jil Hales. All photos Jil Hales(unless otherwise noted).

Menu of the Week.....In the Gallery.......

Dish of the Week

New Fall Menu

The garden dictates changes to our menus virtually every week of the year. But while there’s no hard line in the sand that can be drawn to signal the end of one season and the beginning of the next, some weeks, like this one, the juggling we do to accommodate the superlative produce our farmers bring to the kitchen door is more dramatic than others.  While heirloom beans, sprouts, quince, and pancetta all started to arrive in abundance this week, so did the last of the heirloom tomatoes. The crazy weather that had left Lazero’s fig trees still bursting with fruit also had chestnuts falling from our trees on the ridge in Philo … I know, there are worse problems to have in life. But it makes calling the menu below the "definitive Autumn" menu a bit of a stretch.

I love this time of year for the crisp snap to the mornings, coming in from the chill to a kitchen fragrant with the smell of quince.  Creamy Mushroom Ragù and classic Frisée salads with lashings of bacon. Lobster Risotto scented with preserved lemons. Ryan’s incandescent Cauliflower Velouté with caramelized florets, raisins, and brown butter almonds (he calls it Trail Mix).  The menu is a blessing right now, a garden-sensitive work in progress, the first of the delicious holiday season to come.

BARNDIVA DINNER Autumn 2011

CAULIFLOWER Velouté, Caramelized Florets, Raisin, Caper, Almond, Caviar   15 Caramelized Diver SCALLOP, Gnocchi, Brussels Sprouts, Quince, Pancetta   16 BUTTER LETTUCE, Champagne Vinaigrette, Orange, Radish, Shaved Carrot   10 Crispy PORK BELLY, Heirloom Bean Cassoulet, Tomato Marmalade, Chive   14 BEET & ENDIVE, Avocado, Apple, Walnut, Warm Chèvre   13 FRISÉE LARDON, Creamy Cabernet Vinaigrette, Garlic Croutons, Fried Hen Egg   15 Local FIG Salad, Bellwether Farms San Andreas, Almond, Shaved Radish   12 Cowgirl Creamery “MT, TAM”, Fall Fruit, Radish, Marmalade 18 “THE ARTISAN” Hand Made Cheeses, Charcuterie, Seasonal Accompaniments   39

LOBSTER Risotto, Corn, Crispy Garlic Chips, Preserved Lemon, Watercress   30 Crispy Young CHICKEN, Roasted Artichoke, Pancetta, Ricotta & Egg Yolk Ravioli   25 Wild Alaskan HALIBUT, Caramelized Brussels Sprouts, Butternut Squash Agnolotti, Bacon   28 Niman Ranch Tenderloin of BEEF, Creamy Morel Mushrooms, Yukon Gold Potato Tots, Carrot Purée    32 Crispy Leg & Sliced Breast of Sonoma DUCK, Spinach, Glazed Cipollini Onion, Caramelized Pear, Foie Toast   29 Bacon Wrapped PORK Tenderloin, Yukon Gold Potato Purée, Apple Marmalade, Caramelized Endive   27

 Goat Cheese CROQUETTES, Wildflower Honey, Lavender   10 BD FRITES, Spicy Ketchup   10 Preston OLIVE OIL, Maldon Salt, Port, Chive   4

TASTING MENU Five course   75     Wine pairing   40 Tasting menus available for the entire table only

Chef Ryan Fancher

In the Gallery

All that glitters is not gold...and thankfully isn't priced like it either. These cuffs and bracelets just in for Xmas are some of the coolest ~ and most affordable ~ we've had in years. Beautiful handcrafted pieces are arriving everyday ~ wire sculpture by Ismael, textiles from Ethiopia, antiques from Burgundy, glass from Syria, ceramics from Japan, and beautiful paintings and steel sculpture...from just down the road. Shop local this holiday knowing you are supporting talented artisans from all over the world.

Above: Brass Squares Bracelet:  brass plated metal squares nestle together to create this light and fluid bracelet with a warm, burnished patina. Great worn in multiples. Strung on elastic to fit most wrists.  $35/ each

left: Square Bead Cuff: Handcrafted brass-plated metal beads strung on wire and finished in softly antiqued tones. $35

middle: Liquid Bronze Cuff: Cast from high quality brass, has molten appearance. $45

right: Crocheted Pyrite Bracelet: Lustrous Pyrite married with gold vermiel make for a striking pairing. Comprised of seven strands of small pyrite beads intricately woven and bound together with gold-filled wire and clasp. $150

All text Jil Hales. All photos Jil Hales and Dawid Jaworski (unless otherwise noted)

Dish of the Week.........Cocktail of the Week...

Wednesday at the Barn

Dish of the Week:

Creekstone Ribeye with Hand-Cut Gnocchi, Spring Vegetables, Tomato Marmalade, Arugula Coulis, Fingerling Potato Chip

We were punch drunk this week with a mouthwatering new cut of steak and the first spring vegetables to come in the kitchen door ~ favas, ramps (wild leek) & stinging nettle!

The secret to keeping the bright color and taste of spring is to blanch vegetables briefly in boiling water, then 'em shock in ice water. However you cook to finish take care to stop at al dente for fullest flavor.

Our potato gnocchi is made with rich saffron orange egg yolks from Early Bird Place with very little flour. Mirroring the cooking process for the vegetables, we poach then cold shock the gnocchi to cook them through before sautéing for color and texture.

As for that steak: We talk a lot about sourcing beef around here. Grazing cattle brings great benefits to the soil, but 9 out of 10 of diners prefer grain fed beef.  Creekstone Farms seems to promise the best of both worlds as the animals are pastured until the last few weeks, when their primary feed changes to grain. It's delicious but the conversation about sourcing continues.

And there’s a good reason Chef Ryan separates the rib ‘eye’ from the cap (calotte) and serves them side by side. Ribeye is part of a long muscle that runs from the shoulder to the loin and as such has a different fat ration depending on where each cut is made. By separating the eye from the cap (which have the same flavor profile, though their different textures subtly affect taste) we are able to give guests a perfect portion of both.

The well-seasoned ribeye is pan fried in grapeseed oil but any oil with a high smoke point will do. Yes, we baste in butter with a sprig of fresh rosemary just before removing the steak to rest.

Spring favas, asparagus, and herb studded gnocchi were piled on top of the eye which rested in a vibrant wild arugula coulis. The beautifully marbled cap was paired with a quenelle of last summer’s tomato marmalade and a single fingerling potato chip.

The tomato marmalade, like much of what we preserved last summer, is starting to run out. Just in time for spring, when we start to do it all again.

♦ ♦ ♦

Cocktail of the Week

¡Fantômas!

The first dinner menu of spring continued to take the lion's share of our attention last week, as we waited for the rains to stop long enough to get our edible flowers and herbs into the ground. Meanwhile, the bar has been quietly crafting away, with Adam and Sam merry as mice on a busman’s holiday.  They previewed the first of the new cocktails for me this week, using two of the hardest spirits to finesse…tequila and pisco. The tequila cocktail is stunning, with lots of lovely bitter notes around a big pink heart of grapefruit citrus. The cocktail is finished with a mist of rosewater,  homage to the drink's namesake, Fantômas, the world's first modern villain.

Ingredients: Grapefruit syrup, fresh grapefruit juice, Amaro Nonino, Aperol, hint of fresh lime mist of rosewater (a small stainless mister is a great investment)

FYI: if you want the recipe, drop us an email and we’d be happy to oblige.

Barndiva's Valentine's Menu

Barndiva's Valentine's Dinner ~ 2011

Barndiva’s Valentine’s Dinner ~ 2011

Many a great chef has floundered on the sea of expectation that is otherwise known as ‘a romantic Valentine’s Dinner’.  “It’s the equivalent of making love with your hands tied,” a chef once told me.  “Even happy couples come in with weighted expectations.”

True, but confounding expectations are what’s great about love, right? We followed a hunch this year that the only thing couples who chose Barndiva for this very special meal didn’t want us to do was bore them.  It was Chef’s idea to use the 5 senses to inspire each dish.  When his insistence on a sorbet intermezzo between the entrée and dessert brought us to six courses we did some quick research on ‘the 6th sense’.  Turns out premonitions- especially when they are of greater things yet to come- was perfect inspiration.

1st Course: Touch

We started the meal with a Barndiva Classic, Warm Goat Cheese Croquettes, which beg to be eaten with your fingers.  Golden salty crust, toothsome creamy filling with a heart of housemade tomato jam. Fingers used again to glide through rivulets of honey studded with lavender flowers.

2nd Course: Sight

You eat with your eyes, first and foremost, but the mouth and the stomach have to follow for something to be both beautiful and delicious.  The spirit of Matisse hovered above the salad course, a delightful dance of form and color: glistening gold and red beets, tutu pink and orange citrus, ripe avocado, blades of red radish, all atop a creamy mound of fresh crab meat.  Nestled in a shower of Rapini flowers was a single tiny house-made Kennebec Potato Chip.

3rd Course: Smell

How to fully enjoy the aroma of our third course, a warm wide-lipped bowl of truffle flecked risotto?  Some lifted it up and inhaled deeply, while others just closed their eyes, and slightly bowed their heads.  There was no escaping the ethereal woodsy smell redolent of truffle oil.  A big fat Maitake mushroom in a crispy tempura batter held pride of place, but the bravura touch was a halo of translucent crème fraîche foam.

4th Course: Taste

Though we offered a vegetarian option, most diners headed straight for the Snake River petite fillet seared and bathed in garlic, butter and rosemary for their main course.  Sweet buttery batons of carrots, caramelized endive, and a mount of OMG Yukon Gold Potato Purée with lobster and crème fraîche sent the dish straight to Umami Heaven.

5th Course: Sound

The snap of a sweet and nutty Florentine was point of entry to our fifth course, a late intermezzo of bracing citron sorbet with slivers of grapefruit and mandarin citrus.  Like a dip in a deep cold lake, it brought you to your senses, just in time for the final course.

6th Course: 6th Sense

Love is risk, we all should know that by now, so it’s a good thing that premonitions exist if only to remind us from time to time to trust our instincts.  Which brings us to our 6th course, Temptation, a triple threat… but definitely not one to be afraid of.  A Lady Gaga lunar hat of white chocolate balanced precariously on an orb of creamy passion fruit ice cream, which, in turn, sat melting on a couplet of moist dark chocolate ganache cakes.  Lovers were encouraged to end the meal as they started it, intimately gliding their fingers through a passion fruit syrup the color of a Mexican sunset.  We don’t know what they got up to after they left Barndiva but ‘our’ 6th sense tells us for most of them, the sweet notes continued.

Sweetbreads

Barndiva's New Year's Eve Menu 2010

(originally posted Dec 2010)

New Years Party 2010-2011

(originally posted January 5, 2010)

California Shepherd's Pie

Foss Creek Kobe Burger

Steak & Egg

Carpaccio of Niman Ranch Prime New York Steak

Barndiva's Mother's Day Celebration May 9, 2010

(originally posted May 12, 2010)

Thou art thy mother's glass, and she in thee ~William Shakespeare

From all of us at Barndiva, we want to thank the beautiful women who graced our dining rooms with their babies, young children, grown children and grandchildren...

The Barndiva Lounge and the Gallery Diningroom were overflowing with Dragonfly roses, knowing looks, delightful banter and genuinely smiling faces.

Thank you for entrusting us with your Mother's Day celebration.