Sunday, August 10, 2014

August 9, 2014 Greenhouse Bistro’s Waffle Mania and The Art of Food “Derren does Dali”

August 9, 2014 Greenhouse Bistro’s Waffle Mania and The Art of Food “Derren does Dali”

Today we planned an excursion to The Center for Ageless Living that included brunch and dinner and a tour of a new winery. 



 We arrived around 11:30 and found that Mariepaule Vermersch had set up her Belgium waffle making apparatus at the end of the restaurant.  Mariepaule’s family brought Belgium waffles to the 1964 New York World’s Fair and ever since they have become a staple in the American kitchen.


We ordered a waffle from Mariepaule  and a Spanish Egg Cup from the Bistro.  We were soon served a lovely Belgium Waffle garnished with whipped cream and fresh sliced strawberries and blueberries.
Then in another few minutes the Spanish Egg cup arrived; served hot  in an individual brown glazed French onion soup bowl filled with hash brown potatoes, grilled bacon, green chili, cheese and a couple of poached eggs with a flour tortilla wrapped around the inside edge of the bowl.  The waffle was light and belted in your mouth, especially when softened by the whipped cream and fruit that had been slightly brandied with the addition of some sugar and wine.

I drank a bottle of Stella Artois Cidré, which is made with apple juice concentrate and was good but not as wonderful as some of the Irish ciders I drank in Ireland made from fresh apples, which went well with the waffle.

After a delightful lunch we drove to Bosque, south of Belen on Hwy 116 and turned at the sign to Black’s Smuggler Winery and rove under the freeway to the fields of grapes and large steel winery building. We were greeted by Tony Black who has owned the building for the last two years and is the winemaker.  He lives in Denver and splits his time between New Mexico and Denver and seems to be deeply involved in the Vine and Wine Society.  Tony was kind enough to let us try all of his wines, even those still in the steel drums and oak barrels that have not yet been bottled.

We particularly liked Tony’s locally grown 2013 Baca Noir and Chambourcin (French hybrids), still in the barrel and the Brianna and Riesling blend.  We bought three bottles of   Sauvignon Blanc, Rosé and Riesling/Brianna blend.


Then we returned to the Center via Route 109 and had couple’s pedicure in the salon at 4:00 and my attendant, Craig, also cut my hair.  After a short dousing in the hot tub at the Garden Gate Day Spa, we dressed and met at the Bistro for dinner.  Executive Chef Derren was in attendance, which thrilled me because I could ask questions about the food preparation.  We both ordered the three course “Art of Food” Dinner made with local ingredients that is being featured as part of Edible Santa Fe’s Moveable Feast promotion in August around the State.

The idea of the menu was to imitate three famous art works;  a Jackson Pollack’s Abstract Expressionist work, a Vincent Van Gogh Sunflower impressionist work and Salvador Dali’s Surrealist Persistence of Memory.  The Jackson Pollack and the Dali images are taken from the MOMA collection and the Van Gogh Sunflowers is from the National Gallery in London.  

Also, Dali’s piece seems to have had a food reference in it.  ”The well-known surrealist piece introduced the image of the soft melting pocket watch. It epitomizes Dalí's theory of "softness" and "hardness", which was central to his thinking at the time. As Dawn Ades wrote, "The soft watches are an unconscious symbol of the relativity of space and time, a Surrealist meditation on the collapse of our notions of a fixed cosmic order".

This interpretation suggests that Dalí was incorporating an understanding of the world introduced by Albert Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity. Asked by Ilya Prigogine whether this was in fact the case, Dalí replied that the soft watches were not inspired by the theory of relativity, but by the surrealist perception of a Camembert cheese melting in the sun.”  From Wikipedia

Here is the menu. 


For the first course we were served a brilliantly white potato vichyssoise in a whit bowl on a white plate.   Chef Derren brought us four plastic bottles with a thin spout on the top filled with different colored liquid ingredients:  a green chili, a deep red beet, an orange carrot, and a basil infused olive oil, which we were to squirt into the soup to imitate the image of the Jackson Pollack painting on the wall.  We had fun, like kids in a Saturday morning art class, squirting and swirling color into the soup.  Here is what we came up with.

We ordered glasses of white wine with the soup.  I drank the recommended Cline Viognier and Suzette settled on a white Spanish wine that I had never tasted before that Jim, her Southern wine purveyor, suggested to her for the Bistro’s Spanish regional dinners.  Here is some info on that Spanish wine, a white grenache;

 TƎRN, Garnatxa blanca: an amazing White Grenache from Terra Alta, in the South of Catalonia

"Quite often, Catalan people have the tendency of thinking that Catalonia finishes at the Ebre river (or Ebro, in Spanish), but that’s not true because when you cross the river you can find an incredible region, the Terra Alta!  This area has the typical characteristics of Mediterranean areas:  with lime coastal mountain ranges, little streams, mountains with conglomerate rocks, Mediterranean forests with pine tree and holm oaks, crops of olive and almond trees and, as well, vineyards, of course.

The climate in this area is quite different from other regions of Catalonia because the summer is typical of the Mediterranean zones: sunny, with hot days, fresh nights and not much rain... the winter has a continental climate.   With all these characteristics it’s obvious that the wines from Terra Alta are different from other wines of Catalonia.  And unfortunately it’s been the great forgotten area, like Priorat years ago, when people think of quality wines. Nowadays people’s perception is changing because they are discovering the great wines, as result of the support for traditional grape varieties, specially the White Grenache, that’s become the bearer from Terra Alta.

In 2010 three friends decided to join forces and start a project together. They had always wanted to make quality wines, but never before thought of doing it together. That’s why these three guys created TƎRN, Obrador de Vi, (TƎRN, wine workshop) and their objective was to produce quality wines.

In
2010 the brand Terra Alta Garnatxa Blanca (Terra Alta White Grenache) was created by the Terra Alta Denomination of Origin trying to choose the best wines made with this grape variety and as a way of promoting the quality wines from this area. And the guys from TƎRN Obrador de Vi decided to make its first white wine and aiming for their wine to be the chosen wine with this brand… and it was!! So they decided that their wine was enough good to be introduced to the brand… and it was!! They got their first objective: to make quality wines, because their wine was recognised and, at the same time, it was recognised for the effort, passion and thrust of these three guys.  That first wine was made in a winery that was not of their own and they only produced 1000 bottles of White Grenache and 500 bottles of (red) Grenache. There wasn’t very many bottles as they were trying to discover if they were able to made quality wines before pulling out of their wine workshop project. In 2011 they had their wine workshop and increased the recognitions and the production. If in 2011 their White Grenache was one of the best from the Terra Alta, their red wine was chosen as the best red from Terra Alta. In 2011 their wines appeared in the Spanish wine guides: the White Grenache with 90 points in the Peñín Guide (Guía Peñín) and with 9,53 in the Catalan Wines Guide (Guia de Vins de Catalunya). The success and recognition arrived quicker than they expected.

This triad showed that to invest in local varieties was a great choice, but they also consider other varieties such as Syrah, with which they produce a young wine. 

These three guys chose very well for the name of their cellar, TERN, a word that in Catalan means set of three things of the same kind, and they knew quickly which these three elements were: themselves (the viticulturist, the one that takes care of the cellar processes and the oenologist)."

I never have drunk a white grenache before and I liked TȜRN a lot.

After we sipped the last of our white wine and ate the last of our soup, Chef Derren brought out plates with the entrée; a Van Gogh sunflower made by laying a mound of beouf bourguigon with its braised bacon, prepared with Talus Wind Ranch beef, simmered with root vegetables from the Center’s garden, mushrooms and onions in a red wine sauce laid on a bed of sautéed spaghetti squash and garnished with an grilled inverted mushroom cap filled with sunflower seeds with a bright green stalk made from fresh previously frozen green peas and edamame beans blended with a warm chicken stock just enough to warm the beans, but not enough to darken their bright green color into that olive drab color of pea smash.

We have become big fans of the locally produced Talus beef and lamb.   The Talus beef used in the entrée was delicious, as was the bright green pea and edamame puree.

We drank the recommended pairing of Kermit Lynch Brouilly Beaujolais, a strong rendering of gamay grapes in a smooth drinking wine with a bit of tannin to cut through the heavy wine and meat flavours in the sauce.

 

Finally, it was time for dessert and again we were amazed when Chef Derren brought out two plates that looked like they had been lifted from the Salvador Dali painting, a picture of which hung on the wall, with a curved cookie decorated with a clock face draped over a quenelle of meringue on a puddle of lemon custard on a plate brushed with a chocolate glaze in the foreground and a lighter caramel glaze in the background that exactly matched the colors of the foreground and background in Dali’s original “Persistence of Memory”.  


The only difference was the signature; instead of Dali, the Chef had written Derren.  We loved his deconstructed lemon meringue pie and ate it in the manner the chef suggested, “The cookie is the crust, so mix the cookie with the meringue and lemon custard and eat them together.”

How can one have a more perfect meal than one that expresses the kitchen and one’s own artistic abilities and wonderful wine for a great price.  The dinner three course meal is $19.00 and a flight of wine with the meal is an additional $15.00 . The  “Art of Food” menu will be served until the end of August, Thursday – Saturday 4-8pm.    Try it; you will love the art of it and the flavour of it.

Bon Appétit


















         

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