Alan Greeley’s Valentine Menu; Talking Wine in Laguna Beach
We’ve just come from New York and while you are reading this, I am writing next week’s column on some of my dining in that great city, just in case you find yourself there and want to follow in my footsteps. Cold and wintry still, but it’s always full of vitality nevertheless. I think I need to go there more often.
Just before we left town, our willpower left us in the lurch here. All we did was go into El Toro Gourmet Meats, which used to be mainly a hometown fresh food market but now sells top quality meats, poultry and seafood. My plan was to take home some meat for a couple of dinners and then we would be off to the big city. I ended up asking myself why we have freezers if we don’t want to use them and came home with enough meat for many meals.
So, now I have life easier because of having some meat on hand. I can thaw two links of their awesome handmade Italian sausages (big, bold, old-fashioned looking ones) for dinner tonight. I like to saut & #233; them with some onion and then add a few cloves of garlic, a large can of very good quality chopped tomatoes, and a little salt and freshly ground black pepper. After only 20 minutes of simmering, I add some fresh basil leaves, adjust the seasoning and serve the sausage and sauce with some pasta. Add a little grated Romano cheese on top just before serving and it’s hard to find a chef who can top this simple and comforting flavor combination.
Those sausages are made with only top quality pork and absolutely no additives or fillers. When you cook them, they stay as big as when they were raw. In fact, all of their red meat is naturally raised and, therefore, not only very tasty and tender but also good for you. This market with its cases full of every cut imaginable looks a little like the wonderful, homey Oakville Grocery in the Napa Valley, which has gained nationwide fame. Worn wooden floors and simple counters and shelves hark back to a less stressful era. We don’t even want the fine reputation of El Toro Gourmet Meats to get that well known. It would then be overrun with tourists, too.
While I have no desire to describe every cut of meat for you, I must mention the duck and rabbit and the best-tasting liver I’ve found, with the exception of Zlaket’s in Garden Grove, the only other local market of this caliber and style I know. The meat may be the main focus here, but the fresh shellfish and swimmers are selected with the same commitment to quality. And, you can purchase your fresh veggies here as well.
Valentine Treats at the Truffle
Hope all you fellows have your reservations made for Valentine’s Day. Would I be mentioning this if I thought you had? Of course not.
So, you might consider calling one of my favorite places, The Golden Truffle, and trying some of super-chef Alan Greeley’s offerings: several choices in each of the categories for the four-course dinner. Shrimp hand roll, oysters on the half-shell, and peppered carpaccio, or Swiss chard soup start it off. The salad course has a Caesar, tomatoes with sweet bay shrimp and spinach with Bloody Mary dressing. Lots of entr & #233;e offerings to choose from: Canadian wild salmon, roasted duck, ravioli with artichokes, pecan-smoked Miyagii loin steak, grilled lamb chops, and grilled scallops come with sides like truffle-flavored mashed potatoes, shrimp risotto, and wild mushroom souffl & #233;. Romantic desserts include Myer lemon custard, dark chocolate raspberry bombe and warm passion fruit waffles. This eloquent dinner is priced at $68 plus tax, gratuity and beverages.
Need I remind you that a quick call might save the day for you?
Wine Tasting Near the Beach
For those of you in South County, in case you’ve not yet discovered it, there’s a consumer friendly wine shop tucked away among various boutiques just a block from the ocean in Laguna Beach. Actually, Len’s Wine Cite, owned and operated by brothers Stephen and Brian Ricker, is 5 years old, so some of you must already know about it. I realize that there are those large wine warehouses that tempt you with their endless inventory of stacked cases of wine from around the world. But let’s get serious about this: most of us wander through the aisles still looking for labels that are familiar and we have neither the attention span nor time to enhance our wine education but a little at a time.
I enjoy the friendliness of small but serious wine shops such as Len’s, where one of the brothers is always there to talk wine with you and where the very coziness of the place is a large plus. There are at least 500 labels at all times in the shop. Every great wine-producing region of the world is represented in the current releases filling the bins along the walls and the shelves throughout. Regular customers come in and the brothers know their preferences and lead them to familiar and new labels of varietals they enjoy.
One of the best ways to find out what Len’s Wine Cite is about is to attend one of its Friday or Saturday evening tastings. Every week, the Friday tasting features 10 wines for $10. The Saturday evening gathering is a little more expensive, $15 to $20 for “library” tastings. They may be all California Cabernets one week, red Burgundies another week, Super Tuscan wines another, Bordeaux yet another and on and on. Friday tastings are held from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. and Saturday tasting hours are between 2 p.m. and 8 p.m.
Stop in and say hello to Brian and Stephen. Enjoy the atmosphere and the wine conversation with them.
