NOM, NOM, NOM: CHEFS' HOLIDAYS DINNER AT THE AHWAHNEE! JANUARY 2012

Green Papaya Salad with Grilled Shrimp

Besides skiing at Badger Pass, ice skating at the Curry Village Ice Rink and shopping at the Curry Village Craft Bazaar, one of the highlights of winter in Yosemite is the Chefs' Holidays food extravaganza at the Ahwahnee Hotel.  Thanks to our friends Joe and Christy, we had the singular delight of attending the gala dinner prepared by sustainable seafood chef Rick Moonen.  There's nothing like sharing excellent food and wine with friends at a cozily lit table in the Ahwahnee's venerable old dining room on a cold winter's night.  We started off the evening with the superlative Green Papaya Salad above, accompanied by champagne (note the little 'c') and incredibly, the food got better and better as the evening progressed!

Christy and JoeI'm fairly certain that all Chefs' Holiday dinners are excellent.  After all, chefs from around the country descend on the Ahwahnee every winter to demonstrate their knowledge and skills to an appreciative audience about the joys of food and cooking.  Though the dinner is not inexpensive, it's worth every penny and you can augment your experience by attending free cooking demonstrations  (read: free food samples!) by the chefs designated for each holiday session.  And did I mention that each dinner course is accompanied by carefully selected wines?  Chef Rick did us a favor by choosing a crop of lovely California wines to savor with our seafood.  After Papaya Salad, everyone at the table lost their minds over the Arctic Char.  The cucumber/horseradish flavors sent the perfectly cooked fish over the moon as far as we were concerned.  By the time the Alaskan Black Cod arrived and was promptly consumed, Ted exclaimed that this was the best meal he had ever eaten.  When Ted says "best meal ever", he is of course referring to a subset of meals cooked outside of our home.  But still, high praise indeed.  No photo of the cod as I was halfway through when I realized I missed the photo op.  Too busy eating.  This also may have been my best meal ever as in addition to preferring seafood over just about anything, I like me some venison.  And it should always be prepared like this with onions, mushroms and brussels sprouts - perfect!

Applewood Smoked Arctic Char

Venison with Pear ButterChef Rick's current venture is RM Seafood in Las Vegas and his efforts to endorse sustainable seafood purveyors for restaurants resulted in "Chef of the Year" status for 2010 by the Monterey Bay Aquarium's influential Seafood Watch program.  Accolades aside, the man has a way with preparing seafood that is a boon for the rest of us.  We talked with Chef Rick after dinner and he shared how much he enjoyed hiking around Yosemite during his visit.  I shared how fortunate I am in visiting Las Vegas next month where I would be enjoying this dinner all over again.

We ended dinner with Sticky Toffee Pudding (right!) and the evening with a table visit from Ahwahnee General Manager Brett Archer and Ahwahnee Executive Chef Percy Whatley.  Both exuded enthusiasm for the dinner and the Chefs' Holidays event in general, as they should.  Both have had a hand in creating an exceptional dining experience enhanced by it's national park setting.  The Ahwahnee team and it's guest chefs are making winters bright in Yosemite National Park.

Michelle and Chef Rick Moonen

Brett and Ted

Did I mention there was a lot of wine?Junket Ratings:

Chefs' Holidays at the Ahwahnee: Junk in the Trunk!

HOME/FOOD: CHEFS' HOLIDAYS AT THE AHWAHNEE IN YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK JANUARY 2011

Just like the Vintner's Holidays at the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite every fall, the chefs get their chance to shine during Chef's Holidays in the middle of the Sierra Nevada winter.  Every January and February, executive chefs from famous restaurants (mostly from the Bay Area) converge on the park to cozy up at the Ahwahnee and dazzle hotel guests and park visitors with their culinary magic.  Similar in structure to Vintner's Holidays, the Chef's Holidays consist of two days of chef demonstration sessions, a chef and cocktail reception and a culminating five course dinner in the Ahwahnee Dining Room with wine pairings.  Though crashing the chef demonstrations may not be as ultimately rewarding as crashing the Vintner's wine tastings, it's a great opportunity to sample food trends and listen to successful chefs share their passion for cooking and cuisine - all just a short snowy walk from home.  And thanks to my friend Joe, I even made it to dinner.

The chef demonstration sessions take place twice a day in the Ahwahnee great room where the seating arrangement and use of a special mirrored kitchen station allows a large audience to view the chef slaving over a hot stove.  The session includes printed recipes and - the best part - samples at the end of the demonstration.  Chefs Holidays Session 4 started with Traci Des Jardins, executive chef owner of three restaurants in San Francisco, who made a batch of Handmade Potato Gnocchi with Wild Mushroom Ragout and a cured salmon canape.  Though she also trained in France and New York, Chef Traci hails from the Central Valley of California, so her recipes are often described as "French inspired California Cuisine".  After the demonstrating chef walks you through the recipes and actual preparation of two dishes, you may meet and greet the chef and then step into the Ahwahnee's solarium to sample one of the dishes.  We were treated to the tasty Cured Salmon with Fennel, Citrus and Herb Salad:

Cured Salmon Salad Recipe Page 1

Cured Salmon Salad Recipe Page 2

Handmade Gnocchi with Wild Mushroom Ragout

During Chefs Holidays Session 2, I attended the Gala Dinner with my friends Joe and Christy.  We were seated in the dining room at a table with another lovely couple from Kentucky on thier first visit to Yosemite.  The dinner was orchestrated by another San Francisco restaurant's executive chef owner, Michael Tusk.  Chef Michael's restaurant, Quince, reflects his early training in France and Italy.  An American from New Jersey, Chef Michael treated us to an Italian five course dinner, beginning with a pumpkin soup and ending with a panna cotta.

 Chefs Holidays 2011 Session 2 Menu

Everything was delicious, but the star of the evening was the second course of Raviolo di Ricotta that was essentially a large raviolo (singular ravioli) with a cooked egg on top.  I don't mean there was egg incorporated into the pasta, I mean a bright beautiful egg yolk visible on the raviloi that was delightful.  My immediate thought after tasting was, "Why didn't I think of this?!".  It was a reinvention of your favorite cheese omelet.  Everyone at the table provided extensive commentary on this dish, and everyone gobbled it up.  My personal second favorite of the meal was the panna cotta, which was quite the best I've ever had.  I have a weakness for rice and tapioca puddings that doesn't necessarily translate to other cream-based desserts, but panna cotta is just my style.

Raviolo Di Ricotta

Agnolotti Dal Plin

Sonoma Liberty Duck

Strauss Farm Panna Cotta - yum!Dining in style on delicious dishes with exceptional ingredients and carefully considered wine pairings makes a great night out anywhere.  What makes the Ahwahnee's Chefs Holidays Gala Dinner unique is access to information about the source of your food and the chef who created it.  Each session's guest chef partners with the Ahwahnee's Certified Executive Chef Percy Whatley to create the menu for the gala dinner.  Since 1989 Chef Percy has worked for the concession company that operates the hotels, stores and restaurants in Yosemite, DNC Parks & Resorts at Yosemite, gathering awards and accolades along the way.  Other special touches include service VIP style (the dining room is staffed to the gills during the gala dinners and any number of wait staff is whisking away empty plates, pouring your wine or presenting your course at any given moment) and dining on the Ahwahnee china.  Just like other national park lodges, the Ahwahnee has an historic china pattern exclusive to the hotel (also for sale in the gift shop and online) dating back to 1929, made by Buffalo Pottery Company in their Ye Olde Ivory line.  The final special touch is live piano music accompaniment to your dining experience.  On this evening we were treated to the musical stylings of Bill Carroll - piano player by night and Yosemite's Postmaster by day.

Chef Percy introduces Chef Michael

Piano Player and Postmaster Bill Carroll

Another special surprise for Joe that evening was the number of photographers at our table.  Being seated at a dining table with a blogger can be trying at times and this aspect of dining or traveling with me and Ted is not Joe's favorite.  Imagine his surprise when the other ladies at the table whipped out their cameras to record each course (and my gratitude at not being the only one!).  The internet phenomenon of recording culinary adventures with your gadget of choice has bled into the countryside.  After finishing this post on my travel and food blog, I could post photos on the Ahwahnee's facebook page or Flickr, review the dinner on Yelp or Chowhound, comment on another blogger's review, post the menu on Menu Pages, tweet about it, post about my professionally written blog post on LinkedIn, Digg it, StumbleUpon it, create a video for YouTube or Vimeo, and initially I could've checked in to let everybody know I was eating the gala dinner in real time at Foursquare.  The possibilities for communicating your foodie love are endless.

After being feted at the Ahwahnee, we've done a little culinary magic of our own at home.  First, a tribute to Ted, who even when serving the most mundane dishes makes the most out of presentation:

And next to homemade pizza with an excellent shortcut.  I made my own pizza sauce for our Hawaiian (ham and pineapple) Pizza, but I used puff pastry from Trader Joe's to make my life easier.  Just thaw and roll out to size and shape with a little flour and pizza crust appears almost instantaneously.  We refer to our large butter-colored cat, Whitezilla, as our very own puff pastry.

Last but not least, we often subscribe to Thomas Jefferson's sentiment, 'meat as a condiment' in our cooking, but we also pursue full-on vegetarian meals.  The dinner below consisted of rainbow swiss chard sauteed in olive oil, garlic and lemon juice, and canned cannelini beans cooked with olive oil, garlic, rosemary, chili pepper recipes from Jamie at Home: Cook Your Way to the Good Life, and pasta tossed with sauteed mushrooms and Sun Dried Tomato Chutney from Cottage Delight (a gift from sister-in-law Linda).  Just a little something to warm us up on a cold winter night in Yosemite.

Junket Ratings:

Chefs' Holidays at the Ahwahnee: Junk in the Trunk!

HOME/FOOD: HOLIDAY IN YOSEMITE DECEMBER 2010

If you can avoid rockfall on the road and drivers in the grip of Chain Control Panic, Yosemite is a great place to spend your winter holidays.  You can ski at Badger Pass, ice skate at Curry Village and snowshoe around the Valley before drinking hot toddies at the Ahwahnee bar or playing board games around the fireplace at the Mountain Room Lounge.  We invited some family to spend their holiday with us in Yosemite and successfully crammed 9 people for a Christmas Eve dinner into our tiny cabin where our Charlie Brown tree awaited the festivities.

Our Charlie Brown tree suited the tiny cabin perfectly.  A live potted Golden Cypress purchased from the Yosemite Lions Club as a fundraiser for community projects, we hope to keep the tree alive in our climate.  We also hoped to prevent our regular raccoon visitor from making off with any Christmas treats.  Raccoons live under our home in the winter and come into the house through the dog door every night around 3 AM.  We only have a single visitor, and mostly he eats any leftover cat food and then leaves, but lately I noticed that he is also washing his food in the dog's water bowl.  Raccoons do wash their food in water, though this has more to do with identifying the food then any sense of cleanliness on their part.  We don't close the dog door at night just in case the old dog has to go outside, so we try to coexist peacefully with our raccoon neighbors.

Preparation for the family visit included smoking some Sierra trout for Tyler Florence's Creamy Smoked Trout with Apple, Celery and Crisp Brown Bread in Eat This Book: Cooking with Global Fresh Flavors.  Ted caught quite a bit of trout this year and we wanted to share this taste of Yosemite.  Christmas Eve dinner also included a classic Ahwahnee Hotel dessert, Pine Nut Pie, and we attended Christmas Day brunch at the hotel to round out the dining experience in Yosemite.

Xmas Eve Dinner Menu

In order to make room for 9 diners in our cabin, we moved the furniture onto the porch which then became the cocktail lounge.  Our friend Joe joined the Hansen/Karner/Whitaker holiday at his own peril which also caused us to have 3 dogs at our Christmas feast: Kaiser the Swiss mountain dog who belongs to the other Hansens, Cody the yellow lab who belongs to Joe and of course Fleabag.  Whitezilla the cat was traumatized by so many dogs and spent his holiday reclining on (and under) our bed with the bedroom door shut tight.

Cody and Kaiser on Crumb Patrol

Late on Christmas morning, Kathy, Wenche, Mort, Martina, Bjorn, Ingrid, Ted and I walked to the Ahwahnee for brunch in the dining room.  Brunch includes standard breakfast items but also prime rib, oysters, and sushi, along with pastries and chocolate confections.  Brunch on this day was $49 per person, though I can't say whether this was a special holiday brunch since we haven't dined here since before I left for Utah in 2008.  Ted particularly received his money's worth with 3 helpings, and the seafood I consumed was easily well worth the cost.  The Ahwahnee dining room is also a delightful place to share a meal with visitors - the architecture is spectacular and the atmosphere lends itself to dining in splendor.

Christmas night we received a brief but beautiful snow fall that glittered under the sun the next day.  A long winter walk was in order, so we left the Lodge to cross Swinging Bridge, past the Yosemite Chapel and across Cook's Meadow to Yosemite Village and back.  Wenche was inspired by the snowy landscape to make a snow angel that might impress family back in Norway with the sheer volume of California snow.  Later that evening, we noticed that the snow piled on top of the twinkle lights lining our fence was making a light show spectacle.

By Thursday before New Year's Eve all of our family had departed, just in time to avoid the road closure of CA SR 140 at the east entrance to the park due to rockfall.  I wasn't lucky enough to get back into the park via 140 after taking Mom to the Fresno airport before the rock fell, so had to do some extensive backtracking on CA SR 41, a road I like to refer to as the Worst Winter Road in America.  After successfully dodging all the lowlanders who stop in the middle of the snowy mountain road to adjust their tire chains all the way past Chiquapin, I had to turn the car into a snowbank to avoid plowing into the oncoming traffic that was blocking BOTH lanes.  After exhausting my complete supply of cuss words, I was grateful to receive assistance from many Good Samaritans in releasing my car from the snowbank (though they would be infinitely more Good if they would just not block both lanes).  Despite all the assistance, Park Ranger Heidi had to tow my car out, for which I am grateful and wish Heidi the happiest of new years.  The rest of the drive was uneventful.  On Friday, we spent a quiet evening at home toasting the New Year with prosecco and beer, watching hilarious 80s videos on YouTube and celebrating Fleabag's 14th birthday.

Happy New Year!  May 2011 bring you everything you need to live long and prosper.

Photo courtesy of NPS

HOME: WINE TASTING IN YOSEMITE NOVEMBER 2010

Since there is nothing better than drinking in the afternoon (except drinking in the evening and the morning), I decided to crash wine tasting sessions at the Ahwahnee this week.  Part of the Vinters Holidays gig at the hotel that attracts big wig winemakers and less famous wine tasters, the event takes place over 6 weeks every autumn in Yosemite National Park.  Yosemite generally lacks cultural diversions that may be compensated for by this single event - tasting incredible wine and food in a spectacular historic national park hotel in crisp autumn weather.  On Wednesday I was particularly excited about attending the Schramsberg session because it meant tasting really expensive sparkling wine from California.  If you are getting visions of Martinelli's Sparkling Cider, just stop it.

Sparkling wine is the term for any Champagne style wine that is not actually created in the region of Champagne, France.  Champagne is also a place name, a wine name and appellation, a special wine glass, an annointment for French kings, a village in Switzerland, a stakes race at Belmont, a type of horse gene, Oasis' best song (as in Supernova), and my personal favorite of alcoholic beverages.  So Champagne is always sparkling wine, but sparkling wine is not always Champagne.  And according to Hugh Davies, the president and head winemaker at Schramsberg Vineyards, 25 times more Champagne is produced in France than sparkling wine produced in Napa Valley.

We tasted five utterly delicious Schramsberg sparkling wines: all Brut (dry) and all retail for $70 a bottle if you can get them.  It seems the winemakers often bring their best hooch for the Vintners Holidays event and show off small batches of reserve wines that are available only at the vineyard.  Lucky me!  I can assure you that it's been awhile since I've tasted $70 wine.  Besides becoming tipsy, I also learned a thing or two about sparkling wine/Champagne grapes: namely the 3 varieties that are used - Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier (only in France).  The terms Blanc de Blanc and Blanc de Noir (white of white and white of black in French) refer to the type of grape used: Chardonnay is white and Pinot Noir is black.  Hugh Davies was inordinately proud of the fact that Nixon took Schramsberg Blanc de Blanc to China with him in 1972 and popped the bottle of bubbly for Premier Zhou.

Photo courtesy Schramsberg Vineyards

Photo courtesy of Schramsberg

Photo courtesy of Dr. VinoAs if sipping a lot of expensive wine is not enough to create a fun-filled afternoon, the Schramsberg session closed with a demonstration of sabrage - the art of opening a bottle of Champagne with a saber.  Apparently this was a hobby of Napoleon's troops (along with conquering other countries and referring to their leader as Le Petit Tondu "Little Shorn One").  Dramatic when performed with a saber, you can also use a kitchen knife.  Please try this at home and let me know how it turns out.

Earlier in the week I attended the Benziger session and sampled some mighty fine white and red wine from this Glen Ellen winery located in the Sonoma Valley.  Representing the Benziger Family Vineyards, the winery's national sales manager, Chris Benziger, talked at length about the biodynamic production of their wine.  Mentioning things like sheep manure, silica sprays and equinoxes kept me riveted - because I like farming - but ultimately the wine just tasted really good.

Jamie Drummond on Food and Wine #24 Chris Benziger from GoodFoodRevolution on Vimeo.

Photo courtesy of Benziger Family WineryChris returns to Yosemite for the Vintners Holidays year after year and has consequentially befriended our friends, Ron and Laura.  We accompanied Ron, Laura and Chris that evening to Yosemite's finest drinking establishment (need you ask? The Curry Village Bar!) after sampling more darkly delicious Benziger Tribute wine, and generally having a good laugh with good company.  Chris and Ted made plans to assault the Sierra as a team and somehow (Ron) I ended up with a bottle of Tribute to take home with me, but maybe Chris doesn't know that.  Even if you can't always afford an $80 bottle of Benziger Tribute wine, I bet you can afford the Benziger app for your phone that will tell you all about it, and by all means acquire a bottle of Benziger wine when you can.

Junket Ratings:

Vinteners Holidays at the Ahwahnee: Junk-in-the-Trunk!

Schramsberg 2005 Brut Napa Valley Carneros: Junk-in-the-Trunk!

Benziger Tribute Vintage 2006: Junk-in-the-Trunk!