Cheese

Belgian endive, toasted walnuts, and Gorgonzola make a satisfying winter salad—and a successful pizza topping. Brian first covers the pizza dough with a layer of caramelized onions, then sprinkles on the braised endive, crunchy nuts, and clumps of creamy Gorgonzola dolce, a young, mild version of the familiar Italian blue cheese. Cut the hot pie into thin wedges for an appetizer, or serve larger wedges with a salad for dinner.

Compared to cheesecake made primarily with cream cheese, this rendition of the American classic is notably light. We make it with Cowgirl Creamery (opposite page) fromage blanc, which is lower in fat than cream cheese, plus ricotta and mascarpone to enhance the texture. A thin layer of Cowgirl Creamery crème fraîche blankets the top. The result is an easy, elegant, lemony dessert to serve in slender slices with a fruit accompaniment, such as sugared berries, a raspberry sauce, or the strawberry-rhubarb compote suggested here.

This crusty soufflé rises spectacularly in the oven and makes a grand entrance when you bring it to the table. The pureed parsnips add an intriguing nuttiness to this otherwise classic dish. Make it a first course at a dinner party or the main event at a more casual autumn or winter meal. Accompany it with lightly dressed butter lettuces, perhaps tossed with some sliced avocado and blood orange segments. The recipe is from Chef Michael Smith, who participated in the 2000 Workshop.

This classic of la cuisine grandmère did not come to Cakebread Cellars via anyone’s French grandmother. We learned it from Rich Collins, who introduced endive to the United States when he began cultivating it commercially in California in the 1980s, as a young man barely out of college. Naturally, he calls his product California endive, not Belgian endive, and he has almost single-handedly built an American audience for this shapely chicory. We have watched Rich’s company, California Vegetable Specialties, grow exponentially, and we use his flawless endives year round in hors d’oeuvres and salads. Make endives au jambon—braised endives wrapped with ham and baked in béchamel sauce—on a blustery winter night, and bring it straight to the table in its baking dish.

Like most of the chefs we take to visit Forni-Brown Gardens (see page 164) in Calistoga, Rocco di Spirito was overwhelmed by the bounty. This farm grows impeccable lettuces, tomatoes, herbs, and other produce for some of the most discriminating restaurants in Napa Valley. For his astonishing first course at the 2000 Workshop, Rocco used Forni-Brown beets, baby carrots, tiny tomatoes, and three kinds of basil. This aromatic stovetop braise is an adaptation of the more elaborate dish he made.

Adapted from a recipe from chef Gary Danko, who participated in the 1994 Workshop, this gratin relies on bread crumbs sprinkled between the vegetable layers to absorb the savory juices. After the gratin cools and settles, you can slice it like a cake and the layers will hold together. All the flavors that suggest a Provençal summer are gathered here—garlic and basil, tomato, fennel, and thyme. Serve the gratin with roast or grilled lamb or a store-bought spit-roasted chicken. Because it tastes best warm or at room temperature, you can bake it before dinner guests arrive.

Celery complements blue cheese, and blue cheese complements steak, so Brian put the three ingredients together. The salad includes celery leaves, which contribute a refreshing herbaceousness. Spooned over the steaks like a salsa or relish, it helps cut their richness. Serve with Potato and Celery Root Gratin (page 165) or wilted spinach.

In the minds of many West Coast chefs, the Dungeness crab is the ocean’s finest crustacean. Canadian chef Ned Bell, who attended the 2004 Workshop, showcases the sweet meat in this pasta sauce, which gets some of its creamy body from pureed cauliflower. The dish is rich and worthy of the spotlight, so balance it with a simple butter lettuce salad in a tangy vinaigrette.

This modern interpretation of a comfort-food classic comes from chef Tom Wolfe, who participated in the 2004 Workshop. Chef Wolfe uses the pungent washed-rind Red Hawk, a cheese from California’s Cowgirl Creamery (see page 177), but you can substitute another washed-rind cheese such as French Époisses or a milder Havarti. The pickled red cabbage provides a crunchy counterpoint to the oozy melted cheese. You will have more pickled cabbage than you need for the sandwiches, but it keeps well. Use it on a hamburger or meatloaf sandwich, or as a slaw.

Brian spreads a roasted-garlic paste on the dough under the mushrooms and potatoes, which gives this pizza an irresistible fragrance. If you have access to wild mushrooms, by all means use them. Bellwether Farms Crescenza cheese is a soft, supple, young cow’s milk cheese that melts well; mozzarella is stretchier, but a good substitute.

It takes a little more attention to grill a pizza than to bake one, but the smoky touch of the grill is appealing—the next best thing to baking in a wood-fired oven. When Brian teaches pizza classes at the winery in summer, he demonstrates the grilling technique because so few people have a wood oven at home. The trick is to start the pizza crust in a hot zone to set it, and then flip it and move it to a cooler zone to add the topping and finish cooking. This topping is vegetarian, but you could add some crumbled sausage or pancetta, if you like.

In late spring, when California asparagus are still available and the Cakebread garden is yielding the year’s first onions, Brian makes this delicate pizza bianca (a “white pizza,” or pizza without tomato sauce). The fresh-dug onions haven’t been cured yet, so they don’t have papery skins, and their flavor is mild. Many supermarkets sell “spring onions” that look like thick scallions with a bulbous root end. They would work in this recipe, as would leeks or even cured yellow onions, but uncured onions have the most delicate taste. Choose a fresh ricotta without pectin or other stabilizers. The Bellwether Farms ricotta from neighboring Sonoma County is our favorite.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Chef Walter Pisano, a 1999 Workshop alumnus, makes an aromatic pesto that includes neither basil nor garlic. He makes it with fresh spring herbs—parsley, chives, and mint—in place of the basil that doesn’t mature until summer. It’s lively and light, just the right complement to his feather-light gnocchi, but you could use this pesto on fresh pasta or fish as well. Chef Pisano’s gnocchi melt on the tongue when made with high-quality ricotta. At the winery, we use Bellwether Farms ricotta (see page 77), but Calabro also makes an excellent product. You may need to visit a specialty cheese shop to find fresh ricotta. Supermarket ricotta containing gums or stabilizers will not produce the most delicate gnocchi.

Canadian chef Rob Feenie made this savory tart during the 2002 Workshop. Unlike quiche with its custard filling, the classic tarte flambée topping includes no egg—just fromage blanc thinned with crème fraîche, sweet sautéed onions, and smoky bacon. The name (“flaming tart”) derives from earlier times, when cooks would bake it near the embers of a wood-fired oven.

Imagine taking a bite of the edge of a cheesecake, with a chunky piece of crust on your fork and a thin layer of the sweet-and-sour cream cheese filling gracing the crust. Now imagine having that flavor in a bite-size version that you can pop into your mouth by hand. These sandwich cookies are like mini inverted cheesecakes (by “inverted” I mean more crust than filling). The cream cheese icing, which adds a tanginess to the cookie, can be made with or without cinnamon. The sugar in the cream cheese icing acts as a natural preservant, so the cookies can be left at room temperature in an airtight container for a week.