Spring Cleaning, Cooking & Reading

Like many people do this time of year, I've recently been doing a lot of purging in an attempt to rid my living space of extra clutter. Does anything feel better than that??

One area that required a significant purge was my library. As a voracious reader, my pre-Kindle book collection was large and starting to take over my living space.  I've always felt deeply connected with my books and loved having them around, but it was time to clean house. So what books to keep and which ones to give away?

It's not surprising that most of the books I kept were my cookbooks. As I wrote about in my Kindles and Cookbooks post, there are just some things which cannot be read on an e-reader. (For the record, I also kept my Bill Simmons' autographed copies of Now I Can Die in Peace and The Book of Basketball, my Hunter S. Thompson collection, The Great Gatsby, The Sun Also Rises and a few other books I couldn't part with).

Of the cookbooks that "made the cut" there have been a few recent additions to my collection that I've been referencing time and again ideas, techniques and inspiration.

Ruhlman's twenty essential cooking techniques that all
home chefs should master. 

• Ruhlman's Twenty: 20 Techniques, 100 Recipes, a Cook's Manifesto: I can confidently say this is the only cookbook you will probably ever need. Not only are Michael Ruhlman's recipes easy to follow, you'll walk away have a depth of appreciation and understanding for how everyday ingredients like salt, eggs and water can transform your dishes, and the science behind it.
  
  
• The Family Meal: Home Cooking with Ferran Adria: Before every shift at El Bulli, the servers and chefs would convene for their staff meal. Long considered one of the world's best restaurants until it closed in 2011, you have to wonder, what type of food would be served? The book documents the "family meal" recipes -- an eclectic collection of comforting, simple and satisfying three-course meals.
  
  
• Momofuku: I'm going to be honest here, I haven't actually cooked anything out of this book yet, although the Momofuku ramen is on my list of 2013 cooking resolutions (see some of my past resolutions here). What keeps me coming back to this book is David Chang's stories about his journey as a chef, which are interspersed throughout the cookbook along with insights on what ingredients and places inspire him.
    

If you're looking for a little spring inspiration, I encourage you to check out these books or perhaps take a fresh look at your own collection.  

 

Sonoma County Dispatch

I recently returned from a wine-soaked week in Sonoma with my mom. It was my first visit to wine country, and I'm already starting to plot when I can conceivably get back there again this year. While there was a lot to love about Sonoma, here are a few of my favorite things from my journey through wine country.

1. Everything is local. Unlike other vacations when you return from a week of eating and drinking feeling like you need to detox, I came back from Sonoma feeling, well, pretty great. The access to local produce, meat and dairy products is plentiful and knowing that everything on your dinner plate came from within a 30 mile radius makes every dish cleaner, fresher and healthier.

Picnic lunch overlooking Lake Sonoma
with Longboard Zinfandel 

2. The people. It's clear that most everyone working in wine country is passionate about what they do and deeply committed to their craft. It's evident when you visit a tasting room, chat with a wine maker or talk to local shop owner.

3. The sunshine. One day our forecast was "abundant sunshine." As someone in the depths of a sun-deprived winter in Chicago, this forecast made me tear up a little.

4. Picnics are the preferred lunch option. Why go to a restaurant when you can sit at a lush winery amid rolling hills or on top of a mountain? One of my favorite meals of the trip is pictured at right. As we were in California, it was only necessary that we tasted some Humboldt Fog (one of the Drunken Goat's favorites...)

5. The vacation souvenirs. We naturally ended up buying a lot of wine on our journey. What's fun is that every time you open a bottle once you return, you get to relive a little piece of your vacation with every sip.

Cheers from the Drunken Goat!