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
