One of the best pasta tastings I’ve had there. The anise-ish tarragon in the beet mezzaluna! The stripes of mint in the tagliatelle with bottarga!

A reservation made months ahead of time turned out to be on the evening of a special cider-themed collaboration with Bushwhacker Cider. How fortunate. Kitchen and dining room: The chicories with leek ash and egg (no photo) were amazing. Chestnut soup with fried Jerusalem artichokes: Pickled quail egg, salmon roe… Gin-barrel-aged cider. And Alice (their granny smith cider) on tap. Butter turnips. Excellent rutabaga. And sure, some pork. ...

Apizza Scholls: still one of my very favorite pizzas in the US (New Haven style), up there with DiFara’s in Brooklyn and Pizzaiolo in Oakland. Amazing crust texture (thin, pliant, slight crunch), balanced tomato sauce… yes.

In Portland recently, I had delicious Indian street-food-style dishes I’d never heard of, in a casual airy space with mismatched chairs and Bollywood movies on a projector. The highlights were the vegetarian kati roll (paneer, egg, pickled onion, chutney rolled in a paratha– every bite delicious) and the vada pav (potato dumpling dipped in chickpea flour and fried, with chutneys).

Farewell, San Francisco Beer Week, it’s been good. I made it out all but two nights, and had to work weekdays (sometimes late), but still managed to do well. In numbers: Events attended: 18 Venues: 14 (Gala, Dynamo Donuts, SOMA StrEat Food Park, Social Kitchen, Noc Noc, The Sycamore, Rosamunde, The Willows, CatHead’s BBQ, Triple Voodoo, Pyramid, Sierra Torpedo Room, Faction, Drake’s) Most-visited: The Willows (Colorado, Maine, and San Diego nights) Friends met for a drink: 11 Beers tasted: About 70? Strangest beer: A really spicy (habanero?) beer at Rosamunde whose name I can’t find. Even bringing it near my face made my eyes water. Favorite non-beer discovery: The Dynamo Donut Campari / grapefruit donut– distinctive citrus and bitter flavors, clean, nice sugar balance. I think tart donuts could be the next thing… Biggest Surprise: Biking into an unexpectedly deep puddle (see photos) Field Notes Drink Local notebooks filled: 0.5 Pliny the Youngers: 0 Hangovers: 0 (pacing, food, and water) The week in photos: ...

I had four one gallon glass jugs and airlocks from the Rye ESB experiments (dosing with different hops and juniper), so I was on the lookout for another side by side brewing experiment. Then late last year I saw some fresh unpasteurized (rare!) cider at a farmers’ market and I had a project. There are so many things you can vary in cider– pasteurized or unpasteurized starting cider, type of apple, yeast (natural, cider, ale, champagne), adding extra sugar pre-fermentation (which primarily just boosts the alcohol, not the sweetness, since the yeast consumes it all), sweet vs. dry, sparkling vs. still, and so on. ...

A remake of homebrew #5 (my anti-Cascade/Columbus/Chinook/Crystal IPA) which had turned out quite well. I tweaked a few things in the recipe and brewing process but mostly tried to replicate it. I brewed on Christmas day, bottled mid-January, just cracked open the first bottle– and I’m happy with the results. A powerful, fresh citrus and herbal smell with no dank/pine in it, a moderately strong (7% ABV), slightly malty, slightly orange flavor, and a long hoppy aftertaste (but not in a bitter way). Just the style of IPA I like to drink (in some ways, like a higher-alcohol extra pale ale). ...

That thing where you bake oiled delicata squash slices in the oven for 40 minutes at 400F, and crack a raw egg into them 15 minutes before the end? Still really good, and easy. +Oven-roasted kale and pancetta.

I’ve finally started reading On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee (1984). It’s not really recipes but more a book about the science, history, and nature of individual ingredients. It’s inspired me to occasionally pick a single ingredient and prepare it several different ways to compare side by side. Taken to a ridiculous extreme for a solo dinner on a busy weeknight, I cooked brussels sprouts and kale four ways each (roasted dry or coated with oil, boiled, raw, raw soaked in lime juice): ...

Unfortunately, a friend I was planning dinner with caught sick, so I had spare pizza dough I’d made yesterday, rising overnight in the fridge… Rather than toss it (but also not motivated to make sauce), I made a quick pizza bianca (olive oil, garlic, rosemary, mozzarella) as the first lunch of the new year: I tried a new cooking method in my somewhat limited electric oven, and it worked reasonably well: Preheating the oven to 500F with pizza stone on the top rack, sliding the pizza onto the stone, then switching the oven to broil and cooking for 10 minutes– letting the preheated stone cook the bottom of the pie while the broiler element cooks from above at the same time. ...

A few most memorable 2013 food moments. It’s partly about the food, partly about the company– pretty much all of these involved a small group of good friends. Finally roasting a chicken in a dutch oven, a basic life skill Making Tartiflette, with a Belgian beer tasting Milk-braising a pork shoulder = morning-after carnitas during an otherwise rough week Biking in the sun, eating dumplings ( Western Lands Dumpling Tour) Five or six great dinners at flour + water, still my favorite bay area restaurant Two trips to Portland (Oregon, that is) with friends– and eating at Apizza Scholls and Screen Door and Evoe, with stops at the Horse Brass Pub on both trips. Having a Japanese-themed dinner party (many different pickles and farm food, sushi) Ramen Shop in Oakland Yakitori Alley under the Yurakucho train station Amazing sushi after lucking into Daiwa Sushi in Tsukiji market, Tokyo (skipping the 2-3 hour line since I was solo) Homebrewing all year, with one beer ( a citrusy IPA) I think was actually quite good (blah blah blah, year in review, blah blah blah) ...

I like cured meats as much (well, probably more) as the next guy. But two salamis have really stood out over the past few years. Olympic Provisions (Portland, OR) Loukanika (pork with cumin and orange peel), ground with such delicious large fat pockets, moist and buttery without being at all oily. And the Salumi (Seattle) Finocchiona (with fennel and a little curry), which sadly I haven’t been able to find in California. ...

A shrub (a.k.a. “drinking vinegar”) is a mixture of fruit, sugar and vinegar. It was popular in Colonial America as it was a way to easily preserve fruit pre-refrigeration, and has enjoyed a resurgence in the past few years as a non-alcoholic apertif or as an element in cocktails. I was first exposed to one a few years ago at the Whiskey Soda Lounge in Portland, OR, and loved the tart/acidic flavor, but didn’t realize it was part of a broader movement. Fast forward to this fall and I got a shrubs and cocktail syrups lesson from Kelly McVicker , at Workshop, and then over the holidays made two more batches. ...

Some purists might say– a waste of good bourbon! But I had a bottle and a half of Woodford Reserve left from Derby Day and I haven’t been drinking it… so it was time to split it into smaller batches, soak various herbs and spices in each, and strain into bottles….

Quick summary: If you’re in Tokyo and you like coffee, you should really go to Be A Good Neighbor in Sendagaya near Harajuku. A cozy little kiosk with just a window counter, several different varieties of beans you can smell, moderately lightly roasted, and very friendly people. He asked what kind of flavors I like in my coffee and I said “citrus”, and he made me a great drip. I noted the Dandelion Chocolate from San Francisco and then we talked about Four Barrel, they gave me a free pin, and suggested which other coffeehouses (third-wave and traditional Japanese) to visit. ...