And the deliveries do just keep coming. A huge tower of boxes has made its way in through the back door. Peeking out from behind is Genna, Barney’s daughter, and everyone greets her by calling out, “The lechuga girl is here!” Hiro starts poring over each box of lettuce, checking what seems like every last leaf. The quality is always perfect, but Hiro always checks. Genna secretly hands Lissa an egg carton, and Lissa gives a big smile as she asks, “Already?” Sure enough, Genna has delivered the most beautiful and fragrant fraise de bois (wild strawberries). I sneak a sample as Genna slips out and Matthew from Omega arrives with the fish order. On any given day, the large deliveries are interspersed with smaller offerings of figs, walnuts, Meyer lemons, corn, tomatoes, goat cheeese, and stone fruit all brought by local purveyors.
When the meat order arrives, Hiro drops everything to check the contents and weights, then immediately begins cutting everything up. He’s particularly interested in a slab of pork belly which, he explains, will appear as a special tonight in a Japanese-inspired dish called “Kakuni.” It’s amazing that this huge hunk of what appears to be mostly fat can be transformed into something delectable.
1:00 P.M.
Now the kitchen is getting really crowded, with several more chefs settling in. Lissa is still working away, encircled by paperwork and answering the phones. It’s time to stretch my legs and get a look at what’s happening in the neighborhood. The building is a great starting point to do just that, tucked behind the main street of the town with vineyards in the distance on all sides. The building is as old as anything in town. Built in 1884, it first housed a foundry that forged small farming tools. After the turn of the last century, parts of the building were destroyed in two fires, and the foundry was closed. Later a glove factory moved in. For disbelievers, there’s a fading sign proclaiming such wares stenciled on the front of the building. In the ’40s, the glove factory gave way to a chicken hatchery. Later, the building was split in two, with offices on one side and a museum dedicated to writer and local Jack London on the other. Finally, in the ’50s, the building was home to a restaurant, a humble little joint called the Hatchery Café, which changed hands and names throughout the following decades.
A loud pop from the kitchen followed by an ominous electrical fizzling sound draws me back into the kitchen. Hiro is sitting on the floor by the mixer. The massive machine had stopped working and he was trying to repair it when he got the wires crossed and gave himself a pretty good shock. He laughs it off, saying he needed an energy boost anyway. Lissa picks up the phone and calls a professional.
2:30 P.M.
Vanessa, the reservationist, has arrived, and she’s making return calls to confirm or change reservations. She’s also fielding incoming calls, juggling four lines at once without getting flustered, and doing her best to calmly address every caller’s special request. In the summertime, the 92-seat dining room books up a month ahead of time for weekday dinners and two months out for weekends. Part of Vanessa’s job is pacing reservations so that there are only seven tables seated every thirty minutes to keep the kitchen and the floor staff from getting overwhelmed.
3:00 P.M.
Waving goodbye to Vanessa, with a reminder that she’s only a phone call away, Lissa goes out to do the banking and a few other errands. Then she’ll head home to have a bite to eat and put up her feet before dressing and returning to the restaurant to help brief the staff and greet the first guests. Thinking about how exhausting it is to host a dinner party for six in my own home, I’m awed by the fact that Lissa is host to more than 140 people every night.
3:30 P.M.
Hiro is sitting at a table in the dining room, writing out a list of tonight’s specials. He makes the pork belly sound much more interesting than when he described it in the kitchen. The phones are still ringing off the hook.
Tim, the manager and sommelier, sits at another table, talking to John Buehler and Misha Chelini of Buehler Vineyards. Misha is a familiar face here, since she worked at Terra for seven years both on the floor and making the pastries. Tim holds a glass of deep red Cabernet up to the light, then tastes it, remarking on the wine’s characteristics.
The back door crashes open and a large green bush walks in. “Hi Kathy,” shouts Hiro. “Hi everybody!” says the bush. Out from behind the greenery steps Kathy Hoffman, the brilliant florist who creates the massive arrangements that grace the restaurant’s two dining rooms. Kathy, another Napa native, is the daughter of Don and Sally Schmitt. Don is the former mayor of nearby Yountville, and with Sally, their other daughter Karen, and Karen’s husband, Tim, owns the Apple Farm, which produces over sixty varieties of organic apples, as well as cider and other apple products. Sally was the first person Lissa ever cooked with professionally, at the Vintage 1870 in Yountville.
No doubt, Kathy is inspired by the seasons and the restaurant’s name. Her floral sculptures capture the essence of the land and the natural beauty of the Valley with branches, brambles, leaves, and flowers, all artfully amassed to create an illusion of spontaneity. Kathy takes a few surviving flowers from last week’s arrangements and puts them in two tiny vases for the restaurant’s restrooms.
4:30 P.M.
The servers begin to show up. As they come in, they seem more like old friends getting together for an evening of fun rather than co-workers clocking in. One of them, Gwen, comes in with a huge container. Hiro’s eyes light up. “Chuck went fishing?” he asks, and Gwen just nods. Her husband likes to fish for salmon and sometimes catches females full of eggs. Hiro is always happy to take the eggs off Chuck’s hands. Opening up the egg sacs, Hiro painstakingly separates and cleans the eggs, marinating them to make salmon caviar, which will be served with the salmon tartare later.
Each of the servers starts in on their work. One tackles the mountain of wine that was delivered, putting some of it in the wine racks for immediate use and setting some aside to go into the restaurant’s aging cellar. Other servers polish glasses and silverware, stocking the items they will need for service throughout the evening. The bussers have also arrived and are cutting up limes, lemons, and butter and setting up coffee service and filling ice bins. Tim fields questions regarding table set-up for the night’s reservations.
5:00 P.M.
Staff dinner is served. Tonight it’s roast pork, pasta with tomato sauce, salad, and desserts left over from the night before. The food is set out buffet-style on the pick-up counter and bussers’ station. Everyone helps themselves to platefuls of food. They know it will be torture to serve Hiro’s food all night on empty stomachs.
5:40 P.M.
Lissa returns in time for the staff meeting, where Hiro is briefing the staff on the specials, describing each dish in detail so that the servers can confidently answer any question a guest might have. One dish is especially complicated (the pork belly “kakuni”), so Hiro makes a sample for them to try. After Hiro is finished, it’s Lissa and Tim’s turn to go over service, noting the evening’s special events: a sixtieth birthday at table forty-two and a marriage proposal at table nineteen. The restaurant often gets requests to present engagement rings. Tonight, there will be a ring tucked into a specially folded napkin. It’s already waiting in the kitchen, carefully identified. “Make sure it goes to table twenty-four,” says Hiro. There’s a murmur of confusion amongst the staff before he smiles and says, “Just kidding. Make that table nineteen.” Tim goes over the new wine additions, refreshing memories of wines sampled at staff tastings. He also adds a couple of observations from the previous evening’s service.
6:00 P.M.
The front door opens and the first guests, an elderly couple, walk in; Lissa greets them warmly and is clearly delighted to see them. They are the Gordons, and as Lissa introduces them to me, she explains that they have been coming to Terra almost twice a month since the restaurant opened.
Lissa and Hiro take a quick spin through the restaurant. As always, everything is tidy and the last-minute preparations are completed. Hiro is dressed in the
same immaculate chef’s jacket he put on seven hours ago. The mingling aromas emanating from the kitchen are absolutely mouth-watering.
6:30 P.M.
As I step back into the dining room, I see everyone in motion. More people have arrived and been seated and the specials are already being described at several tables. I watch as Lissa stops by a table where a guest is talking to a server about particular ingredients. She hands Lissa a card listing her allergies, and Lissa heads to the kitchen to confer with Hiro. It is important to them to be careful but still make the meal interesting. Lissa returns to the table to describe what they will prepare for the guest, who is visibly pleased and relieved to escape another night of steamed vegetables!
7:00 P.M.
Back in the kitchen, Hiro is calling out the orders and each cook responds as they hear a dish from their station called. Three people are working in the pantry station, making all the cold appetizers and some parts of other dishes, plus later they will plate the desserts. A food runner zooms by with appetizers for table twenty-one. Sarah, who works the grill, appears cool and calm despite the constant waves of heat rolling over her. From another corner, a busser rushes in with a tray full of plates and deposits them with the dishwasher, hustling out as fast as he came in.
8:30 P.M.
The dining room is in full swing. Every table is full and Tim is talking with a customer about the ideal wine for the meal ordered. Serious wine talk is to be expected in this part of the country, but sometimes it gets out of hand. A few weeks ago, a customer ordered a bottle of Chardonnay. The server, Patrick, presented the guest with a taste of the wine. The customer told Patrick to go ahead and serve the wine, but asked him to throw out the sample and get a fresh glass. As Patrick was pouring the guest’s “fresh” glass of wine, the diner explained that all the sulfites in wine are only present in the top ounce, so once that is poured, the rest of the wine is clear, which is something most winemakers don’t know. With all his training, Patrick smiled and said, “How interesting.” Of course he knew the guest was repeating a myth, but thought it was a harmless mistake; correcting him would have tainted an otherwise wonderful memory of a great evening.
During service Lissa seems to be everywhere and to watch everything. She tries to be by the door to greet arriving guests, and once they are seated, she walks the “track” around the dining rooms. The way the restaurant is laid out, the staff can follow a circular path through the front, both dining rooms, and the back. I’m surprised to see her appearing in one room and then in the other from the opposite direction. While walking through the restaurant, Lissa is available as an extra set of hands, to help take care of anything that is needed: clearing a table, pouring more wine, being always on the lookout for a table that needs more water or bread. The servers know that they can ask Lissa for help with anything (except opening Champagne). Everyone works as skilled, graceful members of a team.
11:00 P.M.
The evening continues to go smoothly, but I start to wane. Tim has promised a wine tasting at the end of the night, so I hold on. As the night winds down, the high energy is replaced with the sense of calm that comes with surviving another successful evening. Each person has his or her job to do. I go looking for Hiro and finds him standing in the refrigerator. It’s not because he needs to cool down (which is a reasonable assumption when you feel the heat emanating from the kitchen), but because he is taking the nightly inventory so orders can be placed for tomorrow.
11:30 P.M.
In the kitchen, the sous chef is writing down a prep list for Manny and the pastry chef. Hiro will augment it with his ideas for specials. This is just a game plan; the menu can change depending on the surprises the morning deliveries may bring. Each person is cleaning and organizing his or her station to minimize tomorrow’s work. I wander back into the dining room and see that tables are reset and everything is put away.
12:00 MIDNIGHT
The last guests have just left, and Tim sets up the monthly staff wine tasting, loading down a large table with enough wine bottles sheathed in paper bags and glasses for a large army—or, in our case, just a small, thirsty one. The wine is bagged so that no one will judge a wine by the winery. Each staff member has a sheet for their tasting notes. At first, I wonder how any of them will make it home after trying so much wine. However, this is a tasting, not a drinking, session; everyone slurps and holds a taste of wine in their mouths, then spits it unceremoniously into a tableside bucket. They discuss and rate the wines, saying the first thing that comes to mind, not some fancy adjective from the wine lexicon. The top wines from each tasting are added to future wine lists, providing a few more flavors to profile for the inquisitive guests who want to know more.
1:00 A.M.
Tim counts the money, and Hiro and Lissa sit and replay the evening’s events. Once they’ve decompressed, they turn their thoughts to tomorrow, feeling tonight as they do each night—that it’s a privilege to walk into this glorious building the next day and start the whole routine in motion again.
Before You Start Cooking Our Recipes
We’re not going to pretend that the recipes in this book are simple. What we’ve tried to present here is the food we serve at Terra—the food we love to cook and eat—adapting it, when necessary, for home cooks and home kitchens.
Many of these dishes have several components and require a fair amount of organization and planning. But what we can also tell you is that, for the most part, these recipes don’t require special skills or a degree from a culinary academy. Follow these simple guidelines and follow your nose. You’ll be rewarded with dishes you can really be proud of.
1. Read the recipe from start to finish before you do anything—shopping, meal planning, thinking about wine, and, most of all, cooking. Do you have a clear sense of what the finished dish will look and taste like and how to fit it into the meal? Do you have the right equipment for preparing and serving it? Is there enough time in your life to make the dish, or hands to help you?
2. As you read, visualize the cooking process step by step.
3. Measure, weigh, and prep as much as you can before you begin. Group together the prepared ingredients for each dish to avoid confusion in the heat of the moment. Set out the equipment and serving items you’ll need, and give your oven and/or grill at least 15 minutes to preheat.
4. Relax and have fun! If you’ve approached things in an organized way, everything will go smoothly, and you’ll actually enjoy yourself!
Sharing good food with people you care about—whether it’s foie gras or a fried egg—is one of the great pleasures of life. These recipes don’t just come from our kitchen. They come from our hearts. And we hope they’ll find a place in yours.
Essential Ingredients
Following are fundamental ingredients you will come across again and again in our recipes. Please be sure to make the effort to find and use these particular items, most of which are available in your neighborhood markets (a few items may be found in ethnic or specialty markets). You’ll find that a specific ingredient really makes a difference in the outcome of the dish!
BUTTER: We always use unsalted or sweet butter. We feel that there is never a reason to add salt to a recipe through butter. Salt acts as a preservative in the butter, which means that salted butter may not be as fresh as unsalted.
CHOCOLATE: Always use bittersweet chocolate, of which there are many excellent products. We use a bittersweet couverture chocolate, which has a very high cocoa butter content. Different brands of chocolate will have different proportions of cocoa butter, so their performance in a recipe may vary. If you are having trouble with a recipe, look for Callibaut bittersweet, which is the brand we use. It is available through gourmet stores and mail order.
CREAM: Restaurant cream is 40 percent fat and is very difficult to find in retail stores. Choose the richest cream you can find, usually called heavy cream or manufacturer’s cream.
EGGS: We use extra large and prefer hormone-free and cage-free eggs.<
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FLOUR: All-purpose flour and pastry flour are not interchangeable. All-purpose flour has a higher protein (more than double) than pastry flour, so it develops more gluten, which gives the flour strength so it can hold up to the heat or bind and thicken a dish. When baking cakes, pastry dough, or cookies, however, you want a soft flour that will crumb easily. If you don’t have pastry flour, you can use all-purpose flour, but delete 1 tablespoon for each cup of flour called for in the recipe. Another technique is to use all-purpose flour to cake flour in a 2 to 1 ratio (for example, if the recipe calls for 1½ cups flour, use 1 cup all-purpose flour and ½ cup cake flour).
MISO: Miso is the fermented paste of soybeans and rice, primarily. The lighter misos have less fermentation and a milder flavor, and the darker misos have longer fermentation and a stronger flavor. For our recipes, use darker miso, aka (red) miso and Hatcho miso, which is very dark brown. Aka miso can also be used for miso soup. All misos will keep for up to a year in the refrigerator.
OLIVE OIL AND EXTRA VIRGIN OLIVE OIL: Most of our recipes call for pure olive oil, but not extra virgin. Pure olive oil is very versatile, it has a mild flavor, and it is good when sautéing or marinating meat, fish, or vegetables before cooking. Cooking will mask the nuances of extra virgin olive oil, which tends to have more olive flavor and more fruitiness and spiciness (olive oils from different producers will vary in flavor). Save extra virgin olive oil for when its bright taste can shine in a dish, on a salad, or with fresh vegetables. Some people prefer to eat bread with extra virgin olive oil instead of butter. We get our olive oil from the Napa Valley Olive Oil Mfg. Co. (707-963-4173).
Terra : Cooking from the Heart of Napa Valley (9780307815323) Page 3
