Conniff - Seasons in the Wine Country

seasons in the wine country

Recipes From
The Culinary Institute Of America at Greystone

by CATE CONNIFF
photographs by ANNABELLE BREAKEY and FAITH ECHTERMEYER

This is no doubt as close as Ill ever get to feeling a bit like the people who win an Academy Award and have thirty seconds to give a nod to all the people who made their accomplishment possible before the music starts. As I stumble through trying to thank even a fraction of the people who have brought this book to life in the space allotted me, I ask in advance forgiveness for any lapse I might make.

First off, I want to thank Maggie Wheeler, my editor at the CIA. Thanks for your patience, your professionalism, and your perennial good spirits. May anyone who wants to put a book together be so lucky. Thank you also to the CIAs president, Dr. Tim Ryan; vice president of continuing education, Mark Erickson; executive director of strategic initiatives, Greg Drescher; and Reuben Katz, all of whom with their leadership and vision made the seed of Greystone a successful reality.

The CIA has been my home since I moved to Napa Valley in 1994. I have had too many opportunities to be around chefs, farmers, artisan food producers, and people who grow grapes and make wine than any one person who loves to be around this clan of people should probably ever be given in a lifetime. Thank you all. You are the reason and inspiration for this book.

I always knew I wanted to do Seasons in the Wine Country with Chronicle Books. To Bill LeBlond, thanks for the faith and encouragement; and to Amy Treadwell and Sarah Billingsley, for the skillful guidance in getting this book where it needed to be; and to Vanessa Dina and Anne Donnard, for designing it. To photographers Faith Echtermeyer and Annabelle Breakeyand food stylist guru Karen Shintowithout you, all of this would only be words upon the page.

I get to go to work every day and learn something new from our faculty, the people who teach the students who walk through the doors at Greystone. I especially want to let Toni Sakaguchi, Bill Briwa, Lars Kronmark, Robert Jrin, Adam Busby, Almir DaFonseca, and Polly Lapettito know that you have made my time at Greystone full of more learning and eating and enjoyment than I can ever convey. To those who have built Greystone, day by day, project by project, the journey would not have been filled with laughter and purpose without youHolly Briwa, Cyd DePreist, Jim DeJoy, Dianne Martinez, Christina Adamson, and everyone else who keeps things interesting and moving forward. To the memory of our collective friend, mentor, and Earth Mother, Catherine Brandel, without whom the reasons for starting Greystone would not have made sense to me.

And while sipping wine and mulling over its pairing with food seems, perhaps, the best job on Earth, I know that it takes a certain discipline of thought and eagerness to share that only rare people possess. To Traci Dutton, whose original voice and take on wine grace these pages, thank you for your persistence in the process.

To Hope Reinman, whose touch with all things sweet and baked brought my jumbled thoughts and ideas about many of the desserts into being with her talent and own sweet spiritI would have been lost in coconut and peaches without you.

To all the writers I have met along the way and who have inspired me with their deft touch with words, especially Paula Disbrowe, a sidekick in crime and one of the best writers I know, merci. To Antonia Allegra, who has always encouraged me, thanks for your faith.

And since no one ever springs unformed, thanks to my family, especially my mother, Micky Angers Ayars, who drove all six of my siblings and me in a station wagon every summer from Chicago to Cape Cod, where we would tumble out onto the sand for fried clams at Lisa Jeans Clam Shack; and my sister, Chris Conniff OShea, who shared a love of date bars. And to my father, Dutch Conniff, thank you for all the conversations about cooking, among other things.

My life on the East Coast set the stage for everything I love about food and cooking. Thanks to Laura Faure, Liana Haubrich, Kass Hogan, and the memory of Paige McHugh, who taught me to be quiet in a garden, the peace of cooking in a kitchen, and much about the mystery that is me, and to Christian and Gooz Draz, and the memory of their mother, Zell Draz; they gave me a place in their hearts and their homes.

And most of all I give thanks to the grace of the two people and a dog who have made Napa Valley my home. Michael, my husband, who brought and kept me here with the life we have made (and trips to the coast for oysters); to Sara Marsten Bittner, who helped make living here home with all the walks and talks and friendship; and to Tazo, the Rhodesian ridgeback, whose noble spirit kept me company all along the way.

In 1987, when as a twenty-four-year-old chef I moved to the Napa Valley, the first thing I realized was that each ingredient I purchased, each dish I prepared, and each wine I enjoyed was grown and crafted by the farmers, food producers, and winemakers who would become part of an extended family of my life in this unique spot on Earth.

When I opened Tra Vigne, the farmers market was brought right to our back door. Neighbor and butcher friend Ernie Navone (and a gang of other Italians) would show up to tell a few stories and share what their expansive backyard gardens produced. All this in exchange for a bowl of pasta, a bite of rabbit, and an order for Ernies great chicken-apple sausage. Joe and Ashley Crisione would show up with a flat of milky, ripe figs before lunch, only to have a plate of grilled house-cured pancetta-wrapped figs served with a drizzle of twenty-year-old balsamico in return. Don Watson (lamb and pig god of the valley) would then arrive to pick up our vegetable trimmings to feed his pigs, drop off a lamb that had been dry-aged for three weeks, and hold class for the young cooks on what makes lamb taste best. Just before lunch service, Barney Welsh of Forni-Brown-Welsh Gardens organic farm in Calistoga would arrive to give us a hug, plus thirty cases of organic handpicked greens, tomatoes, and herbs. And he was never without a box of samples we had to taste: cavolo nero (rare then) and maybe some Grapoli tomatoes from seeds I had gathered on my last trip to Italy. Products like these made my food what it was. My job wasnt to cook them well, it was simply not to mess them up on the way to the table.

Over the years I was blessed with scores of Napa Valley friends who made and loved wine. Belle and Barney Rhodes, both Mondavi families, Jack and Jamie Davies, Milt and Barbara Eislee, the Trefethens, Larry Turley, Dan and Margaret Duckhorn, Kourner and Joan Rombauer, John Williams, Tony Soter, and many, many more. With them came Darrel Corti, Narsai David, and others famous in California for their exquisite taste. Through these friendships, I learned the stories of each vintner as expressed in every bottle that we shared.

These connections between food and wine and people has taught me the largest lesson in my life, one that I have made my culinary lifes quest: the difference between taste and flavor. We experience taste in a number of ways through our senseswhat food feels like in our mouths, what it smells like, looks, feels, and even sounds like. Flavor, for me, is more allusive. As I braise a Don Watson lamb with some Forni-Brown-Welsh vegetables, serve it with some Crisione balsamic vinegar over dried figs, and open a bottle of Heitz Bella Oaks Cabernet, the stories of the people who brought these foods and wines to the world are in each bite and sip. Taste comes together with memory and friendship and conversation to create what I feel is flavor in all of its intricacies.