In about a week I'll be off to New Zealand, diving headlong into the harvest at Craggy Range Winery, where I'll be working on Blake Family Vineyard wines, getting my first winemaking experience in a truly cool-climate region. I'll be working mainly with Blake Family Vineyards Bordeaux varieties; focusing on Merlot and Cabernet Franc. I'll also be working with some white grapes - Sauvignon blanc, Riesling, and... sigh. Chardonnay.

Now, I was raised on French wine lore, which holds that Chardonnay is the noblest white winegrape (Cabernet Sauvignon and Pinot noir tussle for the red crown), and for a long while I believed it. I was amazed at the different faces it could show, from taut, almost shrill Chablis, tasting of minerals and stone fruit, to opulent, mouth-filling Montrachets whose richness and layers of flavor almost overwhelmed my palate.

So, what happened to cast Chardonnay from the white grape throne? Two things - one, I was introduced to German Riesling (topic for another time!); and two, I started looking for Chardonnays of Burgundian character from Californian producers. With that approach, I was destined for failure. You simply can't make French wine in California, or vice versa - they're just not the same place, and that difference comes through in the wine.

One of the biggest differences - and most easily qualified - is temperature. It gets hotter here than in France, and it stays hotter longer. This means, in general terms, that the grapes we grow here tend to have no problem producing sugar (the vine does this quickly in hot weather) but might not be able to synthesize some of the more complex flavor and aroma compounds, nor retain their natural acidity.

The end result is that here in California, without judicious vineyard site selection and rigorous attention paid to the vines, the fruit will make wine that is high in alcohol (from the sugar), low in acid (tastes, if you can imagine this, 'flabby'), and will be pretty monodimensional flavorwise. An attempt is often made to disguise this last outcome by covering up the fruit's character with oak or barrel flavors and aromas, often submerging the fruit in toasty vanilla overtones to the point that you can't tell what kind of wine you're drinking.

However, I have found some noteworthy versions of Chardonnay that suggest California vintners are figuring out how to make this grape sing.

Melville 'Inox' - No oak, no malo-lactic fermentation, nothing but the fruit and the vineyard. Try a bottle of this to see what Chardonnay is like with no clothes on. Surprising and educational. www.melvillewinery.com

Stony Hill Vineyards - My vote for the best Chardonnay in California. They've been at it since the 50's, and it shows. One of the few California whites that gets better with age - I recently had a '92 that was fresh and still developing in bottle. www.stonyhillvineyard.com

Chasseur 'Lorenzo' - Excellent cool-climate vineyard site, expertly produced. A richer style of wine than the previous two, with great balance. www.chasseurwines.com

Littorai - Californian elegance firmly founded in the Burgundian school. Runs a close second to Stony Hill in my book. www.littorai.com

So what do YOU think about California Chardonnay? Have any wine suggestions for me? I'm always interested to try something new!

It is always interesting to me how people react when you tell them that you are going to a pig roast. Some find it fascinating, perhaps even in a oh-look-there's-a-car-wreck kind of way, some find it mouthwatering, and others find it gruesome and perhaps a bit barbaric. It's about fifty-fifty when it comes to wanting to know the details. So if you are in the gruesome, don't-want-the-details group, read someone else's post. Just walk away. Okay, so you are still here. Well, don't say I didn't warn you.

I am in the group that is not only fascinated, but I wholeheartedly want to participate. I imagine that I am in the minority. Most people don't want to deal with their food on this level. Not really. But for years I wanted to roast a pig. Or bury it in a pit and slow-cook it. Then, last February (2004), my friend Max invited me to his annual pig-roast birthday fete. It was the 3rd year in a row that he had taken over his parents lovely Monterey home, invited way too many people, and put on a sit-down feast that would have made Henry VIII blush. Not able to keep my opinion to myself, I jumped right in and we agreed to bury the pig in a pit and cook it all day. Max did a lot of research, bought a very large pig, brined it and stuffed it with herbs and other items I won't go into detail about, and then we wrapped it, threw it in and buried it. We cooked it all day and finally unearthed it late into the evening. Unfortunately, a few things had gone wrong. The pig was undercooked. Significantly. And it was perfumed by the burlap we wrapped it in (whose idea was that?). Anyway, we resolved to learn from our mistakes. The next year would be different. (From what I heard, the previous two years had been somewhat unsuccessful in the pig arena as well.)

So last weekend, Max's birthday rolled around once again. After much planning, email swapping, and flipping through cookbooks, Max arrived at a fantastic (if somewhat lofty) menu. Centered around the pig of course. He purchased a 25-30 lb suckling pig from Golden Gate Meats, hauled it home, then rubbed it down with plenty of salt, pepper, herbs, and cracked fennel seeds. The day before the party, he and his ever-patient fiancee Davina drove the pig down to Monterey (her car is still a bit perfumed by this experience). The day of the party they rented a spit, built a nice low fire using logs and charcoal, and by noon the piggy was slowly spinning toward dinner. Try as I might, I didn't make it there until just after the pig started rotating, but throughout the day, in between making fresh herb and ricotta ravioli, shaved fennel and blood orange salad, roasted beets, smoked trout with homemade mayonnaise, asparagus wrapped in prosciutto, braised greens, caramelized onion focaccia, roasted peppers, and myriad Italian-inspired tarts, tortes, and cakes (especially the heavenly goat cheese and lemon cake), we kept an eye on the pig. And throughout the day, as the sun went down, the guests arrived, and the wine started flowing, the pig took on a beautiful bronzed color.

Late in the evening, after the antipasti and primi courses had been enjoyed, the moment of truth arrived. Armed with flashlights, heavy gloves, and a large wooden board, we set out for the pig. To the tune of ooohs and ahhhs (and perhaps a few little whimpers), we carved the succulent meat and passed it around the table. Heaven. This year we had succeeded. Juicy, perfectly seasoned, it was one of the best pigs I've ever eaten. The rest of the evening is a blur, probably best left to our memories, although I do remember a heated ping-pong tournament around 4am.

So now that we've mastered the pig, what's next? I can't wait until next year.

*A side note: It is easy to see where Max gets his incredible passion for food (and his adventurous food spirit!) as his parents are hugely active in making this annual party happen. Among many other things, thanks to his dad for setting up a new smoker so we could eat that amazing trout and thanks to his mom for waking up at some ungodly hour to make all of those amazing desserts!

Asparagus is the classic Spring vegetable, and the farmers markets are beginning to brim with it. I for one like to eat enough of it when it is in season that I am sick of it by the time its season is over, and don't crave it again until next spring. Since I first saw it in the market a few weeks ago, I have had it in stir-fry, as a side vegetable, as a first course, and in raclette. One of my favorite things to do with it is make a simple frittata that can serve as dinner, breakfast, brunch, or lunch. A recipe is below.

Have you ever wondered if there is a plural of asparagus? Is it asparagi?? Asparaguses?? Looking it up in my dictionary gave me little guidance, and I am forced to conclude that asparagus is both the single and the plural -- like one fish, two fish rather than octopus and octopi. Still I did learn one interesting fact from my dictionary: asparagus was, for two centuries, called "sparrowgrass" in English!

Asparagus Frittata
I make frittatas all the time, using whatever produce I find in season at the farmers market.

Ingredients:
One bunch asparagus
1 large or two small leeks
4 hen's eggs from family farm chickens, or 1-2 goose eggs, or 3 duck eggs
1/4 cup cream, half-and-half, or whole milk (from a family dairy, if possible)
1/4 cup grated cheese such as cheddar or monterey jack, or crumbled feta (cheese is optional)
2 tablespoons butter
salt and pepper
nutmeg

Procedure:
1. Preheat oven to 300.
2. Break off tough ends of asparagus. Cut asparagus into 2-inch lengths (on the bias) and steam (or blanch in boiling water) until barely tender -- just a couple of minutes. Remove from heat and allow to cool quickly (or plunge in ice-water).
3. Slice leeks in thick rounds and put in a bowl of cold water and mix to get the dirt out.
4. Melt butter in an oven-safe skillet (cast iron or stainless steel), and when it's hot lift the leeks out of the water in handfuls, shake off excess water, and put in the pan. Saute over medium heat until just soft.
5. Meanwhile, mix together the eggs with cream, milk, or combination.
6. Add a generous amount of salt and pepper, and a grating of nutmeg.
7. (Because I buy farm fresh eggs, I always taste my raw egg mixture and don't worry about salmonella -- this way I can taste whether it's salty enough. For my palate, the egg mixture should be salty enough to taste the salt, yet not overly salty...)
8. Add the asparagus to the pan and pour the egg mixture over, then add in the cheese, pressing it gently into the eggs. Let cook on stovetop over low heat a few minutes, and then transfer to the oven and bake until the eggs are just set. (You can also finish under a broiler, as long as the pan isn't too deep and you keep a close eye to make sure it doesn't burn).
9. Remove from oven and slice and eat, served with salad and good bread, and maybe a few new potatoes.

Serves 3-4

Copyright 2004 Jessica Prentice

You wouldn't know it now, but as a kid, I was SUCH a picky eater. I hated almost everything except grilled cheese sandwiches. In fact, by age eight, I OD'd on grilled cheese sandwiches with what I considered disastrous consequences. I won't go into detail, so I'll just say that I learned the hard way what happens when you have too much cheese and not enough fruit, and I was so traumatized by this that I avoided grilled cheese (or any other kind of cheese) for a very long time.

Anyway, my mother had a tough time feeding me, because I retched loudly at the sight of most cooked vegetables, grains, and casseroles. There were even a few meats I didn't get along with. It wasn't just me, either -- my older sister was just as picky. My parents finally had to institute a "Three more bites and you're done" rule. Basically, after sitting at the dinner table long after my parents had finished eating and cleared everything else away, they would get tired of trying to get us to finish what was on our plates and tell us, "Okay, just eat three more bites and you can be excused." They knew that we kids had the stamina to outlast their patience. We would have sat at that table until we left for college rather than finish our dinner. The Three More Bites rule was often accompanied by dramatic gagging and face-making as we used our water to treat the three bites like medication that had to be washed down. That way we didn't have to chew anything, and if we didn't have to chew anything, it meant we didn't have to taste anything. My dad used to lecture us that sloshing down our food that way meant that we weren't going to get the nutrition from the food.

Okay, number one, kids don't care about nutrition, so using that as an argument isn't going to get you very far. And number two, it's false. As I've come to learn in my adulthood, as long as the food hits your stomach, it's going to get dissolved into your bloodstream -- chewed up or not. How else do you explain oysters? However, there were times when even the Three More Bites rule was too much for us. We concocted some elaborate and spectacularly faulty schemes for getting rid of our food without ever actually putting it in our mouths.

First, there were our three cats who always hung around under the table at meal time, rubbing up against our legs suggestively. Their overly-friendly behavior might have had something to do with the fact that my sister and I would carefully slide bits of food off our plates and oh-so-casually drop our hand down to release it to the cats. We had this one cat, Feisty, who would eat everything -- peas, meat, succotash, whatever. Another cat, Pooter, was a little too predatory in his methods of dealing with table scraps and nearly gave us away a few times. Pooter was an incredibly sweet and docile cat who had the unfortunate habit of growling whenever he chewed. My sister and I would bang our feet, clatter our silverware, or start talking at the tops of our voices to cover up what was going on under the table. Once, my mother got really suspicious and looked under the table to see Pooter wrestling with a particularly large piece of Shake 'n' Baked pork.

That was another mistake we learned not to repeat. You couldn't give the cats more food than they could handle in one bite, or you ran the risk of discovery.

Stay tuned to find out how books, Dixie cups, and plastic centerpieces all conspired to make sure we didn't eat our victuals.

Two of my favorite chiles to cook with are chipotle and smoked paprika. Perhaps the reason I love the smoky flavor they impart is that I am longing for days when my ancestors cooked their food over an open flame. Or maybe living in a city apartment I just miss a good barbecue now and then.

Both chipotle and smoked paprika start out as fresh chiles and then are dried and smoked. They each have emulsifying and thickening properties which make them wonderful for stews and braises.

Chipotle chiles start out as jalapenos but when smoked they change their name. Chil refers to the "pepper" and potle is derived from poctli, meaning smoked in the language of the Aztecs. They are grown and processed in the US and Mexico.

Paprika comes from Hungary and Spain but is also produced in Turkey, and the US. Generally Hungarian paprika is considered better quality than Spanish paprika, though Spaniards will probably disagree. In Hungary it is famously used in goulash and paprikash. But perhaps the most desirable paprika of all is smoked paprika which comes from La Vera in Spain. It can be "sweet", semisweet or hot and uses the pimenton or pimento chiles which are dried and smoked for about two weeks over oak embers.

Both chipotle powder and smoked paprika will lose their flavor over time. Only a buy a little and don't keep it longer than two years. You can find good quality chipotle and smoked paprika at most gourmet shops. If you haven't tried using these spices think of them as your new "secret ingredient". Add a pinch to your favorite recipes to really jazz them up. Some of my favorite ways to use either smoked paprika or chipotle are in:

* Barbecue sauces
* Chili
* Mayonnaise
* Risotto
* Deviled eggs
* Roast chicken
* Soups, especially Spanish garlic soup

One thing I love about the wine industry is how the work follows the seasons. Springtime finds me in the vineyard checking the new buds and shoots; in the summer I sample ripening fruit and prepare to pick; fall is a mad around-the-clock rush as the year's crop is fermented and new wine is put to barrel; and winter is...well, winter is the slow time. Sure, there are things to do, like tend young wines in barrel, bottle what's ready, and prune dormant vines, but this is as slow as it gets.

I'm always afraid too much down time will turn me into a leisure-loving layabout, so I decided to capitalize on this year's lull in the action and arrange a harvest job in a New Zealand winery. I'll tell you about where I'm going next week, but, first let me tell you about the Kiwi wines that got me dreaming of heading south.

Last Wednesday the 16th, I attended a fundraising event for the Doug Wisor Memorial Scholarship at St. Francis Winery in Sonoma. Doug Wisor, the charismatic and talented winemaker of New Zealand's Craggy Range, died suddenly last year, and his friends and family have created a scholarship to help young winemakers travel to New Zealand to work a vintage and promote the development and interchange of winemaking concepts. By all accounts, the evening was a great success, and enough money was raised to provide the scholarship fund with a solid start. Congratulations and thanks to Steve Smith and the Craggy Range crew, St. Francis Winery for hosting, Kobrand Corporation for their support, Mark Blake for his generosity, and all those who came to honor Doug.

I had the opportunity to try some of the wines Doug made at Craggy Range that night,
and here are my favorites:

Le Sol 2001 and 2002: Both vintages of this 100% Syrah bottling were by far the best wines I've tasted in a great while (which believe me, is saying something!) Dense and concentrated, without the over-ripe character often found in California bottles, these multi-layered wines lured me in with wonderfully complex aromas of bramble, black tea, pepper, and blueberry, then exceeded expectations on the palate with mouth-filling richness, taut acid, plenty of fruit, wonderfully soft tannins. Amazing balance.

Sophia 2002: This blend of mainly Cabernet Franc and Merlot put me dangerously close to falling in love with Bordeaux varieties again. A brooding, smoldering giant, with everything from cassis and black licorice to violets and tobacco all wrapped in a framework of solid tannins. Could last for decades, but how could you wait that long when it's this good now? Sophistication and power.

Doug Wisor Special Selection Pinot Noir 2002: This bottle achieved what is so difficult for California Pinot producers to wrest from their grapes: delicacy without the sacrifice of strength. Earthy in the Burgundian style, the complex and constantly evolving nose kept me coming back again and again. Lively fruit and good acid on the palate.

I also enjoyed the Craggy Range Riesling, which was aromatically seductive, and the Sauvignon blanc, which has all of the mouth-watering acidity and herbaceousness one would hope for in a Kiwi offering of this variety.

Check these wines out for yourself -- Chuck down at the Jug Shop on Polk and Pacific in San Francisco is carrying them -- and let me know what you think.

A few years ago, I had my first exposure to raclette. I was travelling in Europe, and some friends from San Francisco happened to be on vacation at a 'summer house' right on Lake Geneva in Switzerland. I couldn't pass up the opportunity to stop in and join them for a few days. The house happened to have a raclette set (something I'd never heard of before) and my hosts graciously introduced me to this meal. This is how it went:
-- A bowl of boiled potatoes was passed around the table. One hostess insisted that, by tradition, they should be peeled. The other insisted that, for the sake of health and convenience, the skins should be left on. On this instance, peeling won out. We put a few potatoes on our plates
-- We were each given little individual pans, on which we placed either vegetables or meat. A generous plate of a distinctive melting cheese called raclette was passed around. We layered the cheese on top of the vegetables or meat, and then stuck our individual little pan under a central broiler -- the crux of the raclette set.
-- After our cheese was melted, we slipped our raclette out onto our boiled potatoes and ate it together.
-- This we did over and over again with vearious fillings until we were completely stuffed.

I loved it.

When those friends returned to San Francisco, they decided to get a raclette set, and told me they would be happy to share it. They invited me and my partner over for a raclette dinner, and my partner loved it as much as I did. Their set has a grill on top, which is great for cooking raw grillable things like sliced mushrooms, baby leeks, onion slices, and sausages or other meat.

Recently, we took them up on their generous offer to borrow the raclette set, and we have been on a raclette marathon. We've had four raclette parties already, and a fifth is scheduled for this week. We're averaging raclette once a week.

I've learned a few things along the way about what works well and what doesn't. Here are a few raclette do's and don't's based on my now copious experience...

-- DO invite a mixed party of vegetarians and omnivores -- this is a perfect meal for these two groups to share. Everyone gets to pick what they want to eat.

-- DO have four to six people. DON'T have fewer than four (it's not as much fun or as worth the trouble); DON'T have more than six, it's just too hectic. Four is the perfect number.

-- DO have an assortment of vegetables, but DON'T have too many. I'd say 3-5 different veggies is a good range. These are my favorites:
• sauteed chard
• steamed broccoli
• sundried tomatoes (reconstituted) in winter, fresh heirloom tomatoes in summer
• raw sliced mushrooms slaked with olive oil (I've used large shiitakes and criminis -- both good!)
• steamed asparagus (in early spring -- like right now!)
• homemade sauerkraut (one of my favorites -- I make mine from red cabbage and the color is gorgeous!)
• sliced rings of cippoline or other tender onion, slaked in olive oil
• baby leeks, sliced in half and slaked in olive oil
• in summertime, sliced baby summer squash and zucchini will be fabulous, as will tender young eggplants

-- DO have two different kinds of meat available. I always like to have Niman ranch ham sliced thinly. Other good options are:
pork chops, brined or marinated and sliced (about 1/4 inch thick)
skinny lamb sausages like the ones The Fatted Calf sells. (The Merguez moroccan sausages)

-- DON'T offer regular big sausages (unless they're smoked) because they don't cook fast enough. Last night I had big sausages but none of them cooked in time on the grill to be eaten! They are now in the fridge waiting to be eaten in some other meal.

-- DO serve a mellow white wine with raclette -- we've enjoyed both Sauvignon Blanc and Riesling.

-- DO have some little cornichons available. They go very well.

-- DON'T bother making a salad or anything else. The meal is confusing enough without it -- focus on the cookable vegetables instead!

-- DO offer a good quality dark chocolate for dessert. That's all you need.

-- DO consider disconnecting your smoke alarm -- if you are doing lots of grilling you can set it off.

-- DO buy real raclette cheese. The raclettes I've been offering from my local cheese shop are both cow's milk raclettes from France. One is cave aged and costs $24/lb. The other is not cave aged and costs $14/lb. There are also goat raclettes available but I haven't tried them. The pricey cave aged stuff is worth the splurge if you can afford it -- the flavor is much more complex. If you can't get raclette cheese you can substitute gruyere.

-- DO figure about 1/3 lb of cheese per person.

-- DON'T fret about whether to peel the potatoes or not -- they're good both ways!

-- DO serve the potatoes warm but DON'T butter them

-- DON'T worry about salting everything... The cheese lends the salt. You might want to use a pinch but don't go overboard.

I would love to hear others experiences with raclette! After next week I think we'll return the set, but sometime we'll borrow it again and go on another marathon. It's just too much fun.

Every year for the past 5 or 6 years I've made a decision to find fresh sour cherries in the Bay Area. It has never happened for me. I've either missed it by a week, or no one knows anyone who grows them. So this year, I decided to start early. Very early. And do a lot of research. First, however, I'll take a step back and offer up a few facts.

Also called tart or "pie" cherries, the most popular variety of sour cherries grown in the United States is the Montmorency. They are harvested in the hot summer month of July. And while they are primarily grown in Michigan and New York, there are surely other sour cherry farmers sprinkled throughout the U.S. Sour cherries are quite easy to find in Europe. Just walk down any street in Paris in the summer and the produce bins are spilling over with sour cherries. That doesn't help me. Who is going to go to Paris and bake a cherry pie? Okay, maybe I'll have to resort to this, but for now, I've decided that I need to find them closer to home.

My pursuit was rekindled recently when I came across a jar of Bulgarian sour cherries in light syrup. I used them in a delicious cherry tart (see the recipe below). But instead of quelling the fire, it just stoked it further. A jar of cherries shipped halfway across the world is just not the same as using the real thing. I started asking farmers at the market (no luck). I emailed CUESA, the Center for Urban Education and Sustainable Agriculture, which manages the SF Ferry Plaza Farmers' Market (still haven't heard back, I'll let you know what I hear). I googled SF sour cherries, Bay Area sour cherries, west coast sour cherries? I searched the internet. I asked friends. I started looking into planting a tree. They are difficult to keep alive. Okay, so I'm a little obsessive.

So now I need your help. I've only got 4 1/2 months. Do you know someone who grows sour cherries? Can you hook me up?

Sour Cherry Tart

FOR THE DOUGH
2 cups flour
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter
1 egg yolk
5-7 tablespoons ice cold water

FOR THE FILLING
2 large jars Bulgarian sour cherries in light syrup (you should have about 3 heaping cups of cherries without juice)*
1/4 cup flour
2/3 cup sugar

1 egg, well beaten
Sugar for sprinkling

To make the dough, put the flour, sugar, and salt in the bowl of a food processor and pulse a few times to mix. Add the butter and pulse until the butter is about the size of large peas. Stir in the egg yolk and water with a spoon. Dump the mixture onto a work surface and knead just until the dough comes together. Form into a disk, wrap with plastic and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 375F. Roll out 2/3 of the dough and line a 9-inch tart pan with a removeable bottom, letting the excess dough hang over the edge. Roll the rolling pin over the edge. Add the dough scraps to the remaining dough and roll into a rectangle, about 10 inches long and 8 inches wide. Cut out about 10 strips of equal width.

Drain the cherries, saving about 1/2 cup of juice. Put the cherries into a bowl. Mix the reserved juice with the flour and strain over the cherries. Stir in the sugar. Pour the cherries into the lined tart, making an even layer. Place 5 of the dough strips, evenly spaced, over the top of the tart. Place the remaining 5 strips perpendicular to the first 5 strips. Using a pastry brush, brush the dough strips with the beaten egg. Sprinkle with sugar. Place the tart pan on a baking sheet and bake the tart until golden brown and the filling is bubbly, about 50 minutes. If the top crust starts to get too brown, cover it loosely with a sheet of foil. Let cool slightly on a wire rack before serving. Serve with a big scoop of vanilla ice cream.

*Please don't use canned cherries. Ick. If you are lucky, you might find frozen sour cherries, but don't hold your breath.

What do you do when you mistakenly order 4.14 lbs of endive from Safeway.com and they deliver it? Experiment. It's like what happened when I mistakenly ordered over 3 lbs of carrots.

I seem to do this a lot, but I maintain it's not my fault -- it's the stupid, low-tech, frames-happy Safeway.com website that doesn't exactly tell me how much I'm getting. Once I made the mistake of ordering 1 endive and they delivered a plastic baggie with a single leaf in it. You might ask why I bother with ordering groceries from a website at all, but then we'd have to get into how I'm saving the environment by not having a car, and MUNI fares going up while MUNI routes are getting cut and, well, that way madness lies.

ANYWAY. 5 lbs of endive.

Last night I used them in a beet salad with candied pecans, blue cheese, and a nice port wine vinaigrette. It was...fine. But it wasn't blowing my clogs off. So, as I lay in bed a few unsatisfied hours later, I started thinking about what else I could do with the 6 lbs of endive and lo if I didn't have to restrain myself from dashing to the kitchen to start inventing right then and there. To my husband's relief, I managed to restrain myself until tonight. As soon as I got home, I cranked the oven up to 475 degrees and started quartering my endive lengthwise. Next, I tossed the pieces with salt, pepper, and olive oil and shoved them in the oven. Until our smoke alarm went off. Have no fear -- it always goes off. It seems to have a very low tolerance for my experiments.

About 30 minutes later I pulled out my 7 lbs of roasted endive and dug in. And then I burned my tongue, so I thought it was a good idea to wait.

Meh.

See, I had such amazing success with the roasted cauliflower that I figured any roasted vegetable would bring me to that same state of caramelized nirvana. Sadly, that was not to be with my 8 lbs of endive. I mean, they were okay, but they were kind of soggy and a touch more bitter than I was expecting. I could've tossed them with a nut vinaigrette but I just didn't feel like it. I really wanted them to be perfect out of the oven. I salvaged the evening by putting another experiment into effect: spreading individual leaves with Gorgonzola dolce and drizzling with chestnut honey.

It was a chicory dessert.

And that's what you do with 10 lbs of endive.

Warm weather the past few weeks may have fooled you into thinking we were heading into Spring. But get real, it's February! A few nice days don't mean the end of Winter. As long as we have to suffer through rain and cold, at least we can turn to the kitchen to take the chill off. Or in this case, the flame at the table. Cheese fondue is a perfect warm-you-up dish. It's also a very social way to dine whether you are having friends over or entertaining that one special person.

Cheese fondue is one of those dishes like hollandaise sauce, ravioli, souffle--once you make it correctly you feel a tremendous amount of satisfaction. So don't let fondue scare you. It's actually fun to make once you get a hang of it. And just like mayonnaise or hollandaise there are things you can do to save it if it starts to go terribly wrong.

When you think about it, it really is a feat of chemistry in the first place. A pot of wine, with melted cheese that turns into the ultimate cheese sauce or dip. The reason it works, is all based on the wine (or cider). The tartaric acid unbinds the proteins in the cheese allowing it to combine with the liquid, which is mostly water. The water in wine keeps the casein proteins in the cheese moist.

The great fear of course, is that the cheese will seize up and turn gloppy, There are a couple of things you can do to prevent this--one is to use a bit of starch, either three tablespoons of flour or about a tablespoon of cornstarch as "insurance" and the other is to have some lemon juice on hand. In case your cheese does start to seize up, add a couple drops of lemon juice and the acidity will unbind the protein. Aficionados also suggest when adding the cheese to the wine that you stir it in bit by bit, using a figure-eight or zig-zag motion rather than circular pattern to prevent the cheese from balling up.

Don't feel constricted to the traditional Gruyere and Emmental version. Even in Switzerland there are lots of variations using many different cheeses. Most cities and cantons in Switzerland have their own version of fondue, there are also French, Italian and Dutch versions...Here are some to consider.

Fribourg
Gruyere is mixed with Vacherin Fribourgeois, or Freiburger Vacherin (which you may or may not be able to find since these are raw milk cheeses)

Geneva
Walliser Bergkase is added to the more common Gruyere and Emmental. May include chopped morels

Glarus
Gruyere and Schabzieger are added to a roux of butter, flour and milk

Eastern Switzerland
Appenzeller and Vacherin cheeses are combined with dry cider

Vaud
Chopped garlic is added to the Gruyere

Neuchatel
Uses Neuchatel wine

Jura (France)
Uses Comte cheese

Val d'Aosta (Italy)
Fontina with egg yolks, milk, butter, flour and shaved white truffle

KaasDoop (Holland)
Gouda, milk and brandy

Here are a few more cheeses you can try in fondue, Beaufort, Tete de Moine, or Hoch Ybrig. Experiment and come up with your own personal blend based on the cheeses you like, mine is one part Gruyere, one part Emmental and 1/2 part Appenzeller.

My last tip is even when making cheese fondue for two, make enough for four. The leftovers are wonderful over toast or to add to a vegetable soup. Too little fondue in the pot will make it harder to dip and dipping is the name of the game. If you don't have a recipe, here's a link to a tried and true version.