Cocktail: Gin Sprig

For this week's cocktail, I wanted to use up the rest of the rosemary syrup I made for the Ruby Rosemary with a cocktail that would have more subtle, herbal flavors.

I knew gin had to be the base spirit and selected Bombay Sapphire for its woodsy, floral notes. St. Germaine is a bit floral too and reminiscent of grapefruit. Both of which showcased the rosemary better than the Ruby Rosemary, even though there's only half a shot of it in here. I named it the Gin Sprig in honor of the spirit and the herb.

Gin Sprig

by A. Huddleston

1 oz. gin (Bombay Sapphire)

1/2 oz. St. Germaine liqueur

1/2 oz. rosemary syrup*

Juice from 1/4 lime

3 oz. club soda

Combine gin, St. Germaine, rosemary syrup and lime juice in rocks glass with ice. Top with club soda and stir.

*To make rosemary syrup, roughly chop about 2 tablespoons of fresh rosemary add to saucepan with 3/4 cup water and 3/4 sugar. Bring mixture to boil, remove from heat and steep for 10 minutes. Strain syrup to remove rosemary. Keep syrup in refrigerator.

Food (Section) Fight!: Week 6

Food (Section) Fight! is my weekly look at The Washington Post's Food section and The New York Times' Dining section with my verdict on which section had the better content for the week.

This week's Food (Section) Fight! is between a good week and a really good week.

The Times had some great stories. I really enjoyed Alissa Rubin's thoughtful piece on her relationship with food while serving as a war correspondent in Afghanistan. I can imagine her joy at discovering that misplaced hunk of parmesan.

Lots of D.C. food in the New York Times this week. An interesting article about smoke flavor in cocktails featured three D.C.-area establishments, D.C.'s Rogue 24 and Columbia Room and Alexandria's PX. These places go to some pretty amazing lengths to infuse smoke flavor into their cocktails (I don't suppose they've thought of just using the liquid smoke flavor?). An article about the growing trend of Indian fast food mentioned Merzi in Penn Quarter. Also, although not in the food section, there was an article yesterday about the secret (or now not so secret) D.C. supper club, Hush. During today's chat, I gently ribbed the Washington Post Food Section about NYT stealing all this thunder. They took the high road, of course.

Recipe-wise, there were two good ones today: a very delicious-looking Fennel Al Forno, which sparked me to ask in the Washington Post chat why fennel is always sold with its stalks, and a traditional Split Pea Soup that I would like to make once I can get slab bacon from Red Apron downtown.

A good barometer of how much I enjoy The Washington Post Food Section is how far through my breakfast I am when I finish reading it. Generally, I finish it about the time I finish my cereal, leaving me enough time to skim another section while I finish my coffee. Not so today. There was so much good content that I didn't finish everything I wanted to read until after work.

Let's start with page E1 and Joe Yonan's monthly Cooking for One column, which explored former Chez Panisse Chef Tamar Adler's An Everlasting Meal, highlighting two really amazing-sound recipes: a kale-based Greens Gratin, which Joe says he enjoys over toast, and Chickpea Pasta. The story itself is interesting too, learning to cook by thinking about leftovers as ingredients for your next dish. Sounds like a wise way to be more frugal in the kitchen.

The other front page story I really enjoyed was Tim Carman's look at meat eating, identifying some stark contrasts between the overall decline in meat consumption and rise in concerns about its production against the increasing--especially locally--cachet of high-end meat-based restaurants, particularly burgers and barbecue. Love this line: "Even as millions of Americans continue to gobble down gourmet burgers, dry-aged steaks, chef-driven charcuterie and bacon-wrapped everything, they’re regularly forced to consider the potential consequences of their actions."

Jason Wilson's spirits column makes me want to run out to the liquor store and hunt down some white vermouth, which I'll admit I'd never heard of until I read his story. He describes white vermouth's taste as having "distinct aromas of thyme and oregano and notes of cloves and vanilla, striking a unique balance between sweet and savory." Doesn't that sound interesting?

Last but not least, Bonnie Benwick's Dinner in Minutes feature offers up a comforting Chicken and Andouille Hash that sounds like a great Sunday morning treat.

Verdict: It was a good week for The New York Times but a really good week for The Washington Post, which claims its third Food (Section) Fight victory in a row. For the year to date, that means they are now tied. Big week next week!

Tom Mueller, Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil

The olive branch is an international symbol of peace. And while peace can develop from nations deciding to set aside their differences, historically, peace is as likely to be the outcome of conquest.

The history, present and possibly the future of olive oil itself is just as two-sided, as skillfully revealed in Tom Mueller's Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil. While many of us see olive oil as a healthful and flavorful all-purpose cooking oil with a golden-green glow produced in pastoral Italian villas, Mueller's examination uncovers its scandalous underbelly.

Historically, olive oil has played important roles in Mediterranean civilizations going back as far as the Greeks and Romans. Its current dark side is reflected in its past, where olive oil has been used in both sacred religious rituals and witchcraft. As interesting as the history is, it's the modern issues that most interested me.

Sure, extra-virgin olive oil is amazing stuff, and Mueller spends plenty of time traveling the world to meet with true believers who produce high-quality olive oil as a labor of love. But he also shows how global market forces, seeking to satisfy a growing a demand for extra-virgin olive oil, are pushing some less scrupulous producers to pass off lower quality olive oil and even olive oil adulterated with vegetables oils as extra-virgin olive oil.

The problem is so pervasive and longstanding that many consumers aren't even aware of what extra-virgin olive oil should taste like. They've been buying inferior product for so long and don't know the difference. Furthermore, many consumers might not even like real extra-virgin olive oil if they tried it, given its intense combination of fruity, bitter and peppery flavors--the last of which will make you cough if you ingest at least a spoonful straight.

Mueller tackles these and other types of deviousness with first-person accounts of his meetings with large-scale producers, independent farmers and government officials. He also reveals how much marketing plays into our perception of olive oil. That bottle with the sunny Italian villa on it? More than likely, the stuff in the bottle was from olives grown and processed in Spain, which accounts for an increasing portion of olive oil bottled in Italian and then sold with no mention of its true Spanish heritage.

With lax international standards and governments unwilling to enforce what standards they do have (The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, for example, has taken a pass, since poor quality olive oil, although a rip-off, does not generally pose a health risk), buyers have to be particularly saavy about knowing what they're buying and who they're buying it from. In an appendix, Mueller outlines resources and tips for choosing good oil.

His journey eventually brings him to California, a minor olive oil producer globally, but a potentially important one in creating a new world order for quality oils, given the ideal agricultural conditions of California combined with the sizable and growing U.S. market for olive oil. There, a small number of producers, particularly in northern California, are putting a lot of care and energy into the burgeoning domestic market for quality extra-virgin olive oil.

My hopes were dashed though when I read this ominous line: "The United States of America is an oil criminal's dream." Despite the good example being set in northern California, apparently in southern California, trouble is brewing, with Mueller describing Los Angeles as a hub for oil fraud where soybean, seed and cottonseed oils are being blended with low-grade olive oil and sold as extra-virgin. It seems the fraud of the old world is alive in well in the new one.

It's no surprise then that in the epilogue of Mueller's book he sees a crossroads: "Are we witnessing a renaissance in olive oil, or the death of an industry?" Certainly, good consumer education, such as this book provides, is an important step in helping to ensure we realize the former.

Olive Oil, A Primer

Maneuvering the olive oil shelf is tricky. In addition to the issues raised in Tom Mueller's book and the University of California studies, there's so much "marketing speak" around olive oil that it's hard to know what you're really buying. Here's my attempt to make some sense of it.

Let's start with the basic question: what is olive oil? Unlike most other common cooking oils, olive oil is really a form of fruit juice squeezed from olives, the fruit of the olive tree. Traditionally, olive oil was extracted by pressing or crushing the olives with heavy stones. Today, the more modern centrifuge is the common industrial method, improving efficiency and quality.

There are two basic types of olive oil: virgin and refined.

Virgin olive oil is that obtained from olives only be mechanical means: traditionally the press or the modern centrifuge. Thus the oil has undergone no chemical alteration, but merely separated from the water, flesh and pit of the olive. Some important virgin oil terms:

Extra-virgin olive oil refers to the highest quality of virgin olive oil. The technical, albeit subjective definition, is oil free from any flavor defects and that has a noticeable fruity flavor. The International Olive Council (IOC) has further defined standards for extra-virgin olive oil, which state that the oil's oleic acidity should be no more than .08 percent. The IOC's lower grades of virgin olive oil are virgin, ordinary virgin and lampante, the last of which is literally "lamp oil" not fit for human consumption. Extra-virgin oil is suitable for a variety of uses, although not high-temperature cooking, since the heat can alter the olive oil's flavor and the oil has a lower smoke point than refined olive oil.

Refined olive oil is olive oil that has gone through a chemical process to remove unwanted flavors and odors. When sold, it is often mixed with some extra-virgin olive oil to add back some flavor, although compared to extra-virgin oil, it has very little olive flavor. It has a high smoke point and lacks flavors that can turn bad from high heat. Thus, this oil is more suited for high-heat cooking, similar to vegetable, canola or peanut oil.

So what do you find in the grocery store? Generally, there's lots of extra-virgin olive oil, with little or no options that claim to be merely "virgin" or "ordinary virgin" (if you see "lampante" in the store, run). Refined olive oils are sold under a variety of names, including light, extra light, pure, classic or just plain "olive oil."

Although many refined olive oils carry the same FDA-approved health claim as extra-virgin olive oils, the refining will likely mean they are lower in antioxidants than extra-virgin olive oil. Antioxidants in extra-virgin olive oil are also destroyed over time and from exposure to light, so it's better to buy oil that's bottled in dark glass. Despite the use of the "light" label, all olive oil has the same fat content.

There is disagreement about whether extra-virgin olive oil should be used for cooking involving heat. Some suggest that refined olive oil should be used instead, since the delicate flavors of extra-virgin olive oil are destroyed and high heat could even make it taste bitter. Others disagree, including myself. I saute with extra-virgin olive oil on medium heat all the time and my food turns out great. If I was doing something with high heat, I would use another oil, however (like vegetable or canola) but for my usual purposes, I see no reason to substitute refined olive oil.

Later in the week, I'll do a taste test of a selection of California and European oils.

(Sources of information in this post include Tom's Mueller's Extra Virginity, The World's Healthiest Foods, and Wikipedia.)

Olive Oil Week

It's Olive Oil Week at Cook In / Dine Out. This week, I'm going to take an in-depth look at one of the most important ingredients in the western culinary tradition, particularly for Mediterranean cuisine.

America's appetite for olive oil has increased dramatically in recent years, with consumption in 2011 having tripled from that of 20 years ago, according to the International Olive Council (IOC). What may have once been considered an exotic import is now an everyday item in the grocery store.

And it's not all imports. Domestic production of olive oil, although a very small slice of global oil production, has tripled in the last 4 years and IOC expects it to double again this year.

My early experience with olive oil dates baco to the '90s when I began cooking. Olive oil was new to me then and was a common ingredient in the Sheila Lukins and Julee Rosso recipes I was making, such as black bean soup, mediterranean chicken salad and chicken fajitas. I remember buying little bottle of Pompeiian brand olive oil and there being little selection in the grocery story.

Although I've cooked with olive pretty continuously since then, my eyes were opened even wider during a trip to Napa last year when I was exposed to the burgeoning domestic olive oil production of northern California. Although we were in wine country, it might as well have been olive country, as there was a palpable excitement about olive oil. Our lunch at the Culinary Institute of America featured olive oil prominently in every course, even dessert (olive oil cake). One of the wineries we visited, Lava Vine, also produces olive oil, which we got to sample poured over some samples of dark chocolate. I'd intended the trip to be a culinary experience, but I didn't expect olive oil was going to be such a big part of it.

This week I'm going to discuss the flavors, research and controversies around olive oil. I'm going to write about Extra Virginity, Tom Mueller's insightful book about the history and modern tradition of olive oil. I'm going to review the latest research of the University of California - Davis Olive Center, which has pitted California olive oils against old world brands with chemical and sensory tests to determine purity and quality and I'm going to conduct my own taste tests to see which extra-virgin oils I like best.

(Pictured above: The Culinary Institute of America at Greystone, the CIA's Napa Valley campus, which features an oleoteca--an olive oil bar for sampling oils in the school's gift shop.)

Equipment: Knives

A period look at essential, useful and interesting equipment for the home kitchen.

Any overview of kitchen equipment begins with knives, the most essential tool of all. Knives are the front line of food preparation--you're not going to get very far without one.

Knives are versatile too. Whenever I see some supposed "space-saver" gadget, I usually think, just get a good knife. If you have a small kitchen like me, this becomes even more important. Knives are compact--they're the ultimate kitchen space saver.

Buying knives can be daunting. What works best is mostly a matter of personal preference, although there are some things to consider in terms of form, material and utility.

Form. Kitchen knives generally take one of two basic forms: stamped or forged. A stamped knife has been cut out of a larger sheet of metal and then sharpened. A forged knife is pounded into its shape from hot steel. Because of this, forged knives tend to feel weightier and appear thicker than their stamped counterparts; they also have a bolster, a bump of metal between the blade and the handle that provides protection from accidentally cutting yourself. Although forged knives are generally considered "better," sometimes the thinner, more flexible stamped knife can be useful.

Some people may be attracted by the "ever sharp" style of knives, knives with a serrated blade that you don't (or rather can't) sharpen. I would not recommend getting a whole set of these. They aren't nearly as sharp as a true honed blade, so they make a poor substitute for real fine-edged knives.

Material. Most kitchen knives are made from steel, although there are plastic and ceramic ones for special purposes. Carbon steel holds an edge well and is easy to sharpen, but is vulnerable to rust and stains. Stainless steel doesn't rust, but it must be sharpened more frequently. Pay a little more and you can get carbon stainless steel, an alloy that represents the best of both worlds.

Utility. Here's where it gets tricky. Before buying any knives, you should consider which specific knives you will use the most. Some, like Mark Bittman, contend that you only need three knives: a chef's knife, serrated bread knife and paring knife. Personally, I have five knives that I use the most, but since most of my knives come from two sets, I also have knives I hardly ever use. You can buy knives individually, but most knife manufacturers sell pretty sets of knives housed in wood blocks. Whether a set is more economical than buying knives individually depends on what knives you want to use. If you buy a set, you probably won't use all of the knives. However, it might be worth it if you get a price break for the few knives in the set that you will use, so consider which ones you really want, price them out separately and then compare that to the set price. A knife block is useful for storing knives, although you could also use a wall-mounted magnetic strip.

My knife collection is composed of two sets plus a few other miscellaneous knives. One set is from Zwilling J.A. Henckels Four Star, a forged carbon stainless set of five knives plus scissors in a block. I love the handle and the heft of these knives. Growing up, we had a few of these, and I always preferred them. My set retails for $541, but Amazon sells it for less than $200. My other set is J.A. Henckels International Fine Edge Pro, a stamped stainless set of five knives. The exact set I have is no longer available, but a similar set retails for $152 (and $64 at Amazon). Clearly, they are less expensive, but that doesn't mean they aren't useful. They require more frequent sharpening, but I've had them 12 years and still get a lot of use of most of the pieces.

My favorite knives (from left to right):

1. 3" paring knife (Zwilling J.A. Henckels Four Star). A paring knife is essential for tasks that involve small pieces of food or require precision. This paring knife is incredibly sharp--it slices a lime in half like the lime was butter. I use it for things like that, cutting off the rough ends of garlic cloves and very fine mincing. Among my knives, I use this the second most.

2. 7" santoku knife (Zwilling J.A. Henckels Four Star). I know the chef's knife is the classic all-purpose kitchen knife, but I got a santoku when they they started being trendy a few years ago and I really prefer it to a chef's knife for a lot of tasks. I think it's just a matter of what you're used to, since they are quite similar. This is the knife I use the most, particularly for chopping.

3. 8" chef's knife (Henckels International Fine Edge Pro). Since it's a stamped knife, this lacks the heft of a forged knife. So even though it's a chef's knife, I don't find this ideal for chopping. However, it's thinner blade makes it perfect for slicing larger items, like fruit (I cut my oranges into wedges with this every morning).

4. 7.5" bread knife (Henckels International Fine Edge Pro). This isn't a particularly versatile knife, but when you need to cut bread, this is what works best. Trying to cut bread with a chef's knife will usually result in squishing or crumbling it. This does neither.

5. 5.5" boning knife (Henckels International Fine Edge Pro). Here's where the flexibility of a stamped knife can be useful. I'm not very good at cutting up a whole chicken, but when I need to do so, this is what I use. The thin knife provides good precision. It also works well for cubing chicken breasts.

My least favorite knives. These are the ones that I find I hardly ever use. Here's why (from left to right):

1. 2.5" peeling knife (Zwilling J.A. Henckels Four Star). This is the knife I never use. It's concave blade leaves me a bit puzzled as to how to use it effectively. I can't think of any task I couldn't perform more easily with eiher a paring knife or a vegetable peeler.

2. 5" serrated utility knife (Zwilling J.A. Henckels Four Star). This, like the peeling knife, is the kind of knife you get in a knife set and then never use. Supposedly, it's good for slicing tomatoes, but I find a sharp chef's knife works just as well, if not better, since you lose precision with a serrated knife. I did use this to slice a grapefruit in half this morning, but I could have used the chef's knife.

3. 10" chef's knife (Victorinox Fibrox). This was just a mistake. Cook's Illustrated raves about the Victorinox line of kitchen knives as a high-performance, low-cost option. I wanted to give it a try, but I shouldn't have bought a 10-inch knife. It's just too big to be useful. If you have big hands, you might like it, but I never use it. Even if I had a smaller one though, it lacks the heft of the Zwilling Henckels knives I use for chopping (the Victorinox is a stamped knife), so I'm not sure I would prefer this anyway.

4. 8" chef's knife (Calphalon). Calphalon?! What am I doing with a knife from a pots-and-pans company? That's a good question. I think this ended up in my kitchen back in the day when I only had the Henckels stamped set and wanted a heftier, forged chef's knife. It's certainly hefty--the heaviest knife in my collection. But it dulled really fast. It's also so thick that it can get stuck in food. I don't think I paid much for it and I got what I paid for.

5. 5" utility knife (Henckels International Fine Edge Pro). People who assemble knife sets seem to think you need a bridge between the small paring knife and the large chef's knife. I think otherwise. Despite its name, I find little "utility" in this knife. It's too big to be useful as a paring knife, too small for carving, and too slight for chopping. You can slice with it, but nothing too big (it's not even large enough to cut through a grapefruit). Basically, there's nothing this knife does that other knives couldn't do better. So why bother?

Parting thought: One final word on knives--keep them sharp. A dull knife is the quickest route to a kitchen injury. Sure, a sharp knife will slice you more easily, but it's not likely to happen if you're paying attention. Dull knives are actually more dangerous because they can act in unpredictable ways. Thus, you are more likely to cut yourself with a dull knife than a sharp knife. And when you do, since it's dull, it will hurt. So run your knives over the honing steel regularly (you can do it every time actually) to keep the blade straight and sharpen your knives when they begin to develop a dullness that the honing steel doesn't address.

America Eats Tavern - Penn Quarter, Washington, DC

When José Andrés announced he was opening temporary restaurant America Eats to dovetail with the National Archives' exhibit on the history of U.S. government and food, it meant shutting down one of his Penn Quarter pillars. Turns out though that the real loss in this exercise will be America Eats itself.

Since opening last July 4, America Eats has excelled at reinterpreting historical American dishes with modernist flair. That means taking some of the techniques from corner Minibar--deconstruction, foams, even molecular gastronomy--and translating them to the larger main dining space. The menu, which focuses more on describing the dishes' historical origins than how its being served, means you're often in for a surprise.

Deconstruction, in particular, is everywhere. Soups come out with their braised, roasted and chopped solid ingredients composed like a still life in their bowls, before the server pours the broth over them at table. Thus my chestnut soup arrived with cooked vegetables composed around its silky, chilled foie gras center all of which were then coated in a warm, savory broth. Cold peanut soup arrives with its roasted peanuts and microgreens awaiting a pour of cool, creamy broth.

The best deconstruction on the menu has to be the Eisenhower Stew, a perfectly cooked piece of beef served with tender root vegetables sitting atop a velvety brown sauce. It's so good, we ordered it twice. Also good is the BBQ beef short ribs with Hoppin' John, another perfectly cooked piece of tender beef with assertive smoke flavor and a little spice. It's served with a historical (yet surprisingly trendy) side of black eyed peas with rice. Less delicious, but still interesting was the cornmeal-crusted croaker with succotash, which was bland compared to the other dishes. It is no longer on the menu, as the restaurant has changed its offerings with the seasons.

Salads provide fresh balance to the meat and seafood heavy entrees. A Harvard beet salad comes with a mix of deeply red beets, half roasted and half shredded. The Waldorf salad is tasty, although takes the modernism a bit far by compressing apples with "celery essence" rather than just including celery. I'm not even sure what compressing an apple would involve, for that matter.

The bread basket, easily skipped at other restaurants, is worth getting here, heaped with fresh hot buttermilk biscuits served with a mixture of butter and blackberry jam. And then there's those hush puppies. Mmmm. They come with a special butter too, this one blended with sorghum for added sweetness.

America Eats was never meant to be permanent, but in the last 7 months, it has distinguished itself as the most creative of Andres' four moderately price downtown establishments. Already extended from its originally planned closing this month, America Eats is due to go dark on July 4, 2012, at which time the space will be renovated to expand his restaurant-within-a-restaurant Minibar from 6 seats to 18 and use the rest of the space as the corporate offices of his business, Think Food Group. When Cafe Atlantico was first closed, there was talk it would reappear elsewhere (it has not). I hope there's talk of keeping this around somehow. I'd love to see a continuing revolving menu of modern takes on historic dishes--seems like an endless supply of inspiration meets innovation.