Root Vegetable

For this salad, Brian likes to mix the moist, orange-fleshed sweet potatoes—such as Garnet or Jewel—with drier, yellow-fleshed varieties. Ask your produce merchant to point you to the right types if you aren’t sure. After roasting and cubing the sweet potatoes, Brian tosses them with a mix of bitter chicories, a nutty sherry vinaigrette, and fine shavings of sheep’s milk cheese—an inspired marriage of contrasting textures and flavors. Serve with pork chops or a pork roast for a winter dinner.

Brian does most of the cooking at home for his wife, Kristina, and their two small children, but this salad is one of Kristina’s specialties. She adapts it to the season, but quinoa is always the starting point. Nutty and quick cooking, quinoa is high in protein and will hold up for about an hour after it’s dressed. Serve this refreshing winter salad with pork, chicken, or fish, or with feta for a meatless meal.

By adding a puff pastry top, Chef Albert Bouchard transforms an easy autumn vegetable soup into a first course suitable for company. The puff pastry seals in all the aromas until diners breach the flaky caps with their spoons. Note that you will need individual ovenproof soup crocks, similar to the type used for French onion soup. The diameter on top should be no more than 5 inches to have the proper ratio of soup to pastry. Chef Bouchard attended the 2006 Workshop.

Many Workshop chefs are unfamiliar with the clamshell mushrooms, maitake, and other exotic fungi that Gourmet Mushrooms cultivates (see page 84), so this company’s table is always a magnet at our opening-day farmers’ market. Chef George Brown, a 2006 participant, took advantage of the bounty to create a warm grilled mushroom and bacon salad. Although many people would be inclined to pair a red wine with a mushroom dish, we chose a mature Cakebread Cellars Chardonnay Reserve, which echoed all the earthy and smoky notes. In this adaptation of George’s recipe, Brian has moved the preparation indoors for ease—first oven-roasting the mushrooms, then tossing them with browned cipolline onions, thick bacon, and tender greens. Serve at the first sign of autumn weather, followed with a pork roast or seared duck breasts.

The Workshop coincides with sweet pepper season, and many chefs are seduced by the varieties they find in our garden. Chef Donald Barickman, a 2000 Workshop participant, succumbed to the small, sweet ‘Lipstick’ peppers—so named for their crimson color—which he roasted and stuffed with creamy goat cheese and served with arugula and roasted-garlic vinaigrette. Bottled Spanish piquillo peppers make a good substitute. Brian adds heirloom tomatoes to make a more substantial composed salad for the end of summer. Serve it before or alongside grilled lamb, sausage, or burgers.

Hubert Keller, chef-owner of San Francisco’s Fleur de Lys, patterned this recipe after the traditional Provençal soupe doux (sweet garlic soup), a specialty of the peasant kitchen. But as you might expect from a chef for one of the city’s most elegant restaurants, Chef Keller has refined the procedure, blanching the garlic to temper some of its bite and adding saffron for a richer color. A poached egg set on a crouton in the center of the soup really dresses up the dish. Chef Keller participated in the 1991 Workshop.

At the 2001 Workshop, Chef Ken Vedrinski astonished guests with a “consommé” made from the strained juice of tomatoes and watermelon. Preparing the dish involved hanging the pureed fruits in a muslin bag overnight to collect the clear, sweet juices—a procedure that might deter many home cooks. Riffing on Chef Vedrinski’s idea, Brian created an easier gazpacho that blends tomato, watermelon, and other summer vegetables so seamlessly that you can’t decipher the contents. The result is a refreshing and original adaptation of the familiar Spanish soup.

Brian likes to serve this slaw with Moroccan Lamb Brochettes (page 124), but it would also complement grilled swordfish, fish brochettes, or grilled sausages. Sometimes, at home with his family, he buys spicy merguez (lamb sausages) from a local merchant, grills them, and tucks them into a baguette with aioli and this crunchy slaw. Choose firm green olives, such as picholines. The texture will be better if you buy the olives unpitted and pit them yourself.

For large parties, it’s useful to have a repertoire of easy hors d’oeuvres that guests can enjoy standing up, with no plate or silverware. Winery chef Tom Sixsmith developed these tender biscuits for the wine and food program at our Visitors Center, where guests can sample appetizers designed to complement our wines. The toasted walnuts in these savory biscuits and the blue cheese butter inside help soften the tannins in our robust hillside Cabernet Sauvignon. To save time, we make the biscuit dough in large batches, cut out the biscuits, and freeze them unbaked. Then we bring them to room temperature and bake them as needed so our guests have warm, buttery biscuits with their red wine. You could also serve them as an accompaniment to a green salad or a vegetable soup.

To show off Florida’s most famous shellfish, Chef Marty Blitz made miniature Thai-style tostadas at the Workshop in 1994. He replaced the conventional fried tortillas with wonton wrappers, which puff and crisp in the fryer and turn a rich nut-brown. Then he topped this crunchy base with a tangy crab and cabbage slaw sparked with fish sauce, lime juice, and chile. It’s finger food, but drippy. Offer sturdy napkins or small plates. If you dislike deep-frying, spoon the slaw into Bibb lettuce cups or Belgian endive leaves. You could also omit the wonton wrappers and serve the slaw in generous portions for lunch, or offer it as a side dish with baked or fried fish.

Chef Nancy Oakes used fresh duck livers from Sonoma County Poultry when she made these elegant crostini during the 1997 Workshop, but chicken livers work, too. She hand-chopped the warm sautéed livers with butter and a lot of sweet sautéed onion, plus just enough earthy truffle oil to make them worthy of a black-tie occasion.

By mid-November, the tomato vines in our garden have usually had enough. The days are no longer sufficiently warm to ripen the fruits that remain on the plants, so we start thinking about fried green tomatoes. Southerners might raise their eyebrows, but Brian uses neither cornmeal nor bacon fat when he makes these. He prefers the lightness of vegetable oil and the crispness of a panko coating. These coarse Japanese bread crumbs are a favorite of many chefs because they produce such a crunchy and well-browned exterior. Brian tops the fried tomatoes with a dollop of softened goat cheese from Skyhill Farms and a spoonful of fennel marmalade. The dish offers so many pleasing contrasts: warm and cool, tart and sweet, crisp and creamy. We typically serve it as a passed hors d’oeuvre with our Sauvignon Blanc, which has the bright acidity to match.

The beets and cucumbers in Dolores’s summer garden and the tangy goat’s-milk yogurt from Skyhill Farms, a Napa Valley producer, inspired chef William Withrow at the 2005 Workshop. He folded diced roasted beets into yogurt, then spooned the mixture into edible “cups” made from cucumber chunks. When all of the ingredients are well chilled, this healthful appetizer is incomparably refreshing—just what you want on a warm summer night.

Inspired by the simplicity and purity of Japanese sashimi, American chefs are exploring the world of seafood crudo (Italian for raw). Typically, crudo is accompanied by Mediterranean garnishes like capers and olive oil rather than the soy-based dipping sauce that is served with sashimi. At the 2005 Workshop, Florida chef James Reaux made a beautiful halibut crudo with chive oil, using the abundant chives in the winery garden. For raw preparations such as this one, the seafood must be impeccably fresh.

Over the years, workshop chefs have devised many memorable hors d’oeuvres with chèvre because of Cakebread’s long friendship with two wine-country goat cheese producers: Laura Chenel and Skyhill. This one-bite appetizer, featuring soft herbed goat cheese spread on a potato slice with a dollop of tapenade, comes from chef Pascal Olhats, who prepared it during the 1993 Workshop. If you have a small food processor, you can halve the tapenade recipe, as you need only a small amount for this dish. Then again, tapenade keeps well in the refrigerator, and you will be happy to have some on hand. Use it as a sandwich condiment or spread for crostini, slather it on grilled tuna, or toss it with pasta.

Like the Devil’s Food Cake recipe, this recipe is oil based, so it can easily be mixed by hand. Cake flour is used here, but not all grocery stores carry it. If necessary, you can substitute all-purpose flour—just use 1/4 cup less and be very careful not to overmix the batter. Also, you’ll notice that this is a raisinless carrot cake; that’s a personal preference. If you want to add raisins to yours, go ahead and add 1 cup. You can also omit the pecans, particularly if nut allergies are a concern.

A colorful platter of crudités and dip is a sure crowd-pleaser for a party—or simply as a snack. As an alternative to lemon-thyme dip, serve the vegetables with the white-bean dip on page 51.