When I was in graduate school studying Clinical Psychology I happened across a book titled Uncommon Psychiatric Syndromes which included the syndrome Folie à Deux. I was fascinated by the concept and ended up writing a paper on it. When I moved to the Bay Area and discovered the winery Folie à Deux I was compelled to check it out -- the Rorschach-like logo of the dancing inebriated nymphs (you see that too, don't you?) touched my psychological and artistic sensibilities as I am a big fan of the Rorschach inkblot test. So, to compound my obsession, the winery came out with a wine series called Ménage à Trois. Now I would guess most people over 18 know what this French phrase refers to and it is always a treat asking for it in a store. In addition to loving twinship (wonderfully depicted by Diane Arbus and Mary Ellen Marks), I am also into triangulation. So, of course, they produce three varieties: red, white and rose and each one is a blend of three wines. My fave -- the red -- is a blend of Zinfandel, Merlot and Cabernet. Here is how Folie à Deux describes it, "Surrender to the seduction of dark, rich blackberry with a hint of pepper and a lush, lingering finish leaving you wishing for more..."

And this threesome is cheap too!

You can buy it online at the website for $12 a bottle and I have found it for about $11 at Whole Foods in Mill Valley, Andronicos on Shattuck Ave. in Berkeley, and Bi-Rite in San Francisco.

Another interesting note is when you read the history of the winery online it says it was started by "two close friends." We just visited the winery and when we asked the wine server the story behind the name he told us a different tale...he said Folie à Deux was started by two psychiatrists, a husband and wife team who ended up hating each other, bitterly divorcing, and ended up selling the winery. So, what really happened? Could it have been the Ménage à Trois?

After some serious pampering up at Indian Springs in Calistoga the last few days, and a very decadent dinner at the Martini House in St. Helena, we were in need of some down-home delicious grub. Besides, we needed a good solid foundation for an afternoon of wine tasting down the Silverado Trail.

We lounged around the heated mineral pool at the Springs until we could stand it no longer, then packed up our bags and headed down to the original Taylor's Automatic Refresher in St. Helena. Taylor's also has a second location (which I've visited many times) at the SF Ferry Building.

Bought by winemakers Joel and Sarah Gott in 1999, who also own the lovely Palisades Market in Calistoga, Taylor's serves up not only some of the best burgers you are likely to find in the Bay Area, but also huge salads, ahi tuna burgers, fried calamari, mini corn dogs, fish tacos, chicken sandwiches, and thick milk shakes made with Double Rainbow ice cream.

If you've never been to this North Bay institution, it's well worth a visit. The kitchy burger stand/diner has a huge back lawn studded with picnic tables. You could do some serious lounging here, especially on a beautiful day. Well, that and the food coma you might go into after ordering way too much.

But the real reason you are here are definitely the burgers. Served on toasted Sciambra egg buns with Taylor's secret sauce, all of their burgers are made with the best-quality ingredients. You can get a simple cheeseburger (always my favorite, I'm a purist) or go for all-out fulfillment with a double burger and combinations of bacon, blue cheese, BBQ sauce, jalapenos, or mushrooms.

Four of us ate our way through crispy beer-battered onion rings, a cheeseburger, a double cheeseburger, a California chicken sandwich (layered with jack cheese and guacamole), and the wild Miss Kentucky chicken sandwich, complete with grilled onions and mushrooms, jack cheese, slaw, BBQ sauce, and ranch (yeah, imagine that!). I'm getting full again just thinking about it. We also slurped down a thick, creamy espresso-chocolate shake and a couple of very refreshing Arnold Palmers (a mixture of lemonade and iced tea, my fave on a hot Napa Valley day!).

We finally got up the will to leave our shady picnic table, roll into our car, and set off on a wine adventure, with a vow to only eat salads for at least a week.

St. Helena Location
933 Main Street, St. Helena
707-963-3486

San Francisco Location
Ferry Building, San Francisco
866-328-3663

One of my favorite meals is champagne and pommes frites (a.k.a. french fries or freedom fries per our current administration) so I guess it's no surprise I ended up in France. Really good pommes frites, the kind that are crispy on the outside, creamy in the inside and not greasy, are extremely difficult to perfect as I can attest to destroying thousands in my humble culinary career. So when I come across perfect pommes frites, it's certainly cause for celebration. Last week at The Village Pub was just such an occasion.

When heading east from San Francisco for cooking school, champagne and pommes frites on the terrace at Auberge de Soleil overlooking the Napa Valley were my send off and while interning at Danube in New York City, I cooked chef Mario Lohninger his favorite dinner of steak poivre with béarnaise sauce and "beautiful, perfect pommes frites", as he specifically requested, every Saturday night. Cooking dinner for a New York Times four-star chef is about as intimidating as it gets, especially for a new deer-in-the-headlights culinary student! He'd look at me and shake his head as I ruined batch after batch of fries. Finally after a few months, my fries were deemed acceptable for consumption.

So last week, just before hopping on a plane heading back to the land of champagne and pommes frites, I spent an unforgettable afternoon at The Village Pub with my friend Tracy from my dot bomb days. We realized our dot com was quickly morphing into a dot bomb when they repo'd the coffee machine, but I digress... The Pub and the inimitable and gracious executive chef, Mark Sullivan, just received four stars and as Tracy declared, the fries alone earned them three of those stars. They were about as good as fries get and I held up my little bucket up in homage for a moment of silence before I quickly devoured them, washed down by a bottle of champagne.

French Fries with Remoulade, $5. Veuve Cliquot '96 La Grande Dame, $198. A wonderful afternoon of champagne and pommes frites with a great friend, priceless.

The Village Pub
2967 Woodside Road
Woodside, CA
650-851-9888
www.thevillagepub.net

Hey, vegetarians, if I told you I found a beer that smelled and tasted like a plate of smoked meats, would you throw a parade or just throw up?

Well, at least one of my vegetarian friends is getting the ticker tape ready as we speak. Then again, she only became a vegetarian because of a late-onsetting meat allergy and not because she was morally opposed to killing animals. Me? I'm a meat person through and through. I always joke that the number one reason I could never become a vegetarian is lamb. And the second, third, and fourth reasons are beef, pork, and chicken!

(crickets)

Yeah. I get lots of blank stares with that one. Anyway, being a meat person I was stoked to discover what was, for me, a new beer.

There's a great bartender over at Suppenküche. His name's Craig and we love him. He sees us and says, "Let me show you something new I've got." And then we drink. It was one of these "something news" that brought us to Smokebeer. Smokebeer, called Rauchbier in Germany, comes from Bamberg in Bavaria and has been made since the 1500s. The intensely smokey flavor in this dark, rich beer comes from exposing the unsprouted malt to burning slats of local beechwood.

The first sip I took was intense. Yep, that was bacon in a glass. One of those and I actually feel that I've had a meal -- it's that filling and it's that satisfying. That said, my limit may be only one of the 25 oz bottles, because of how aromatic and full the beer is. However, set me up with a platter of Suppenküche's sumptuously crispy potato pancakes and a bowl of homemade applesauce and I just might keep on sipping.

The two places Craig suggests looking for Smokebeer in San Francisco is at Suppenküche on the corner of Hayes and Laguna in Hayes Valley or at Schnitzelhaus on 9th at Folsom in SOMA.

Until we make our next visit, I have an empty bottle that we absconded with just so we can sniff it every once in awhile. Mmmm, Bacon.

Title: Chef/owner, Nick's Crispy Tacos, recent winner of SF Weekly's Best Taco 2005

Hometown:Trumbull, Conneticut, now living on a sailboat in Sausalito

1. What did you eat growing up?
I have the typical Italian American background. We ate lots of pasta and traditional Italian dishes, pretty healthy food. I ate artichokes when I was little, stuff most kids probably wouldn't eat. We went out to eat a lot. We were always going into New York. I even remember eating at the Russian Tea Room.

My whole family was in the restaurant business. My mother, stepfather and brother own an Italian restaurant in Connecticut called Tuscany which just got a great review in the New York Times. Growing up my mom's uncle had a restaurant, my grandfather had a restaurant supply store, and my mom had a restaurant for a while too.

My mom was a great cook. After my parents divorced I lived with my dad and he wasn't much of a cook. So I started cooking for my dad and my brother. I'd call my mom and get recipes and techniques from her.

2. What's your favorite item on the menu?
Still has to be the fish taco. I love it the most. After I moved here I went down to Baja and tried the fish tacos, then I came back and tried sampling one and that was enough, I decided I knew exactly how I wanted mine to taste.

3. What makes a great taqueria?
What pushes me is consistency and quality level. With a lot of taquerias it might be a mom cooking and it's easy for her to get overwhelmed. We sell 600-1000 tacos a day and so you have to know how to do things on a large scale. We use the Niman Ranch meats, Fulton Valley farms chicken. The food is number one, but we are as goofy as we can be in this nightclub environment with pinatas hanging from the chandeliers. There are people who love the decor even more than the food, which is not what I was going for! We're "Tijuana chic"

4. What would you be doing if you weren't a chef?
I'd be doing something on the water. Maybe on a tugboat? I'd work as a mate on a private yacht and then get my captains license.

5. What's the best thing about living in the Bay Area?
It's the close proximity to outdoor activities, and that's where I have the conflict with being inside and cooking all day. So running a taqueria is perfect. I can be surfing in ten minutes at Ocean Beach or mountain biking in the Headlands in ten minutes. The wine country is an hour away, Tahoe is three hours, I can even drive to Mexico in eight hours, or fly to LA or Vegas.

I live on my sailboat in Marin, it's a quick commute and I'm in the City. I love the Headlands, Mount Tam, Cronkhite Beach. I try to get out and do that as much as possible.

My bi-continental roommate just received his first round of funding to launch his hi-tech start-up so to celebrate we went to Lime on Market Street. A few parking spaces are reserved along the wall across the street in the Thai Restaurant parking lot. For those of you not from San Francisco, it's hard to describe the sheer joy at finding an available reserved parking spot! It elicits high-fives, fist pumping and various other unprintable exclamations.

Self-described as “1960's era modernist”, walking into Lime is like walking into George Jetson's home. Glossy white chairs and banquettes and oval shaped shiny white tables line the wall of the dining room and face a low white marble bar. The front lounge area is dotted with round and square ottomans along the perimeter and a floor to ceiling window of pink glass create a surreal view of Market Street.

We kicked off the evening there with the obligatory bottle of Veuve Cliquot champagne in honor of our other continent... Lime serves a seductive array of “tapas” that span the range of cuisines and flavors from Mexican to Japanese to good old American. By the end of the evening, I need a wheelbarrow to roll me out. I wanted to try as many of the dishes as humanly possible and I think we pushed the envelope with that goal but it was delicious and we anticipated each dish with much anticipation. Funny, I didn't realize just how much food we ordered until I wrote this! I was so full by the end but managed to indulge in a delightful dessert of “lollipop” cheesecakes dipped in white and dark chocolate. Cheesecake and chocolate...life is good!

delicious little fish tacos on soft corn tortillas with a creamy avocado mousse and salsa.

perfectly crispy beef quesadillas with mango-strawberry salsa.

tuna "nachos" of sorts. tuna carpaccio with fried wontons.

my favorite. grilled sea bass in a perfect lettuce cup with a creamy miso sauce.

the ultimate confort food, grilled cheese and tomato soup unplugged. the soup is served cold but the grilled cheese was perfectly grilled and gooey.

porcini mushrooms and goat cheese adorned this prolific pie.

these were incredible. there wasn't much meat left on the bone when i was done. served with a tangy tzatziki greek yogurt sauce, delicious!

darling bite size cheeseburgers. mine was cooked well done but John's was perfectly medium rare.

cheesecake lollipops dipped in white and dark chocolate.

cue cymbals.

Lime
2247 Market St (Noe/Sanchez)
San Francisco, CA 94114
(415) 621-5256

This weekend is ideal grilling weather. So we fired up the grill, threw on some steaks, and made a few of our friends very happy. The menu for our "Is Summer Here Yet?" dinner was simple and inspired by Italy.

We started with nibbles for toasting:
• Roasted spiced almonds and cashews
• Marinated olives
• Champagne cocktails

I roasted raw almonds and cashews in a 325F oven with olive oil, salt, and brown sugar until toasty and brown. They were completely addictive. You could also add pecans to the mix. These, along with plenty of Champagne and olives marinated in orange zest and garlic, kept the gang happy while the rest of the meal was moving along.

We then moved on to the main event:
• Grilled Porterhouse steaks with red onion marmalade
• Grilled mushroom salad
• A gorgeous Cotes du Rhone

After firing up the grill, I rubbed olive oil on 4 beautiful Porterhouse steaks before tossing them on a really hot grill. The steaks were really incredible. It's so important to purchase your meat from a reputable butcher or rancher. I don't know how many times I've plugged Prather Ranch, but they are really the best. But there are plenty of other places to get great steak, just look around and ask lots of questions.

We served the steak medium-rare with the red onion marmalade and the mushroom salad, all on the same plate. You could extend the meal by serving the salad first, then serving the steak with grilled zucchini and summer squash as a second course. But make sure you get a yummy, peppery red wine to have alongside your lovely steak.

And for dessert:
• Homemade pistachio ice cream

The pistachio ice cream, which was actually a gelato recipe, had incredible flavor but the texture was grainy and a bit icy. I used a recipe from Saveur. This is my second attempt at making pistachio ice cream/gelato, and the first time was far worse. So perhaps, after my third attempt (and some mucking with the recipe), I will share it with others.

Red Onion Marmalade
To serve this marmalade with steak, omit the honey. Add the honey and serve with pork or lamb. It's competely addictive.

3 medium red onions, preferably organic
8 tablespoons unsalted butter
3 tablespoons honey (optional)
1/2 cup dry rose wine
1 tablespoon fresh marjoram or oregano, chopped
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
Kosher or sea salt
Freshly ground black pepper

Peel the onions, slice them in half lengthwise, and cut them into thin half-moons. In a medium saucepan over medium heat, melt the butter. Add the onions and sauté for about 10 minutes, until soft.

Add the honey and wine, reduce the heat to medium-low, and let simmer for about 20 minutes. Stir in the marjoram or oregano, and simmer another 10 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat and add the balsamic vinegar. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Before serving, warm the marmalade over low heat.

Grilled Mushroom Salad

About 1 pound cremini mushrooms (or about 6 mushrooms per skewer/person)
Olive oil
2 shallots, chopped fine
2 cloves garlic, chopped fine
Kosher or sea salt
Freshly ground black pepper
About 5 cups spinach
Balsamic vinegar
Wedge of Parmesan

Scatter the mushrooms on a roasting pan or baking sheet. Drizzle with olive oil to coat, then toss with the shallots, garlic, salt, and pepper. Let stand for 30 minutes. Skewer the mushrooms onto wooden skewers, about 6 per skewer (count on one skewer per person).

Prepare a charcoal grill or heat a gas grill. Grill the mushroom skewers over indirect heat until tender, about 15 minutes, turning often.

Toss the spinach with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt, and pepper. Portion out onto individual plates. Top each with a mushroom skewer. Using a vegetable peeler, shave Parmesan over the top of the salad.

This weekend a few Bay Area internet food writers are launching their fresh new book, Digital Dish from Press for Change. Yours truly of The Grub Report, Television Without Pity, and Bay Area Bites will be there, but I am only one of many delicious writers represented in the book.

The local writers who will be there to launch Digital Dish are Owen Linderholm of Tomatilla and the man behind Press for Change, Guy Prince of MeatHenge, and Ellen Ferlazzo of Cheap Cooking.

You can order piping hot copies of the book here, and for Bay Area peeps, a few of us are going to be at a book signing/food discussion/food demo on May 21 and May 22.

On Saturday May 21st an author talk and book signing will take place at the Berkeley Farmer's Market at 11:30AM as part of its annual Strawberry Tasting event.

On Sunday May 22nd, an author talk and book signing will take place at the Lafayette Book Store in Lafayette, California at 4PM.

I'd love to have you all come out and cheer us on, buy some strawberries, talk food, and generally revel in the food mecca that is the Bay Area.

Here's how to get there:

Berkeley Farmer's Market, Saturdays 10 a.m. - 3 p.m., Center Street @ M. L. King, Jr. Way, Berkeley, CA. This is in downtown Berkeley two blocks West (toward the Bay) of Shattuck and the Berkeley BART station.

Lafayette Book Store, 3579 Mt. Diablo Blvd. Lafayette, CA Contact: (925) 284-1233. This is in downtown Lafayette a very short walk from the Lafayette BART station and one block West of the downtown Safeway/Starbucks intersection.

If you have ever tried cooking Indian food then the "dance of spices" might be familiar. Many Indian recipes call for cooking whole mustard seeds in oil and within a few seconds the seeds begin to pop, or perform a dance in the pan.

If you love Indian food, making it for yourself can be a real delight for the senses. But if cooking Indian-style is a mystery to you, a great cookbook is more than a pleasure, it's a necessity. Local food writer and cooking teacher Laxmi Hiremath has written a wonderful book on Indian cooking that is peppered with memories of food from her childhood, The Dance of Spices: Classic Indian Cooking for Today's Home Kitchen.

Hiremath begins her book by explaining the seven steps to make curry. She patiently describes the various ingredients needed for an Indian pantry, and teaches you how to cook through her detailed recipes. She seasons the book with a good dose of hints which American cooks may not be as familiar with such as "ground spices are less likely to stick to the pan when cooked quickly".

The book includes over 238 recipes, many of them vegetarian, for cooking Indian food in your own home whether you are an accomplished cook or a novice. A weighty compendium you will find plenty of variety between the covers; for example she has no fewer than thirteen recipes for chutneys and that doesn't include several variations and a couple of chutney powders.

If you have a favorite dish from an Indian restaurant you will probably find the recipe for it, but you will also find many dishes never served in restaurants, what Hiremath calls "homestyle dishes". If you are fond of the snack style Indian food called "chaat" you will be pleased to find many of those dishes as well. Unlike many other Indian cookbooks this one also includes recommendations for wines and desserts that compliment these dishes. If you want to immerse yourself and learn the techniques, as well as all about the essential ingredients, this is an excellent place to start.

Growing up in Texas, I was surrounded by an incredible range of regional specialties that emerged from a surprisingly diverse culture. (You might not think of Texas as being diverse, but the state is actually made up of a wide variety of cultures. The Latino population alone makes up more than a third of the entire population of Texas.)

Texas-style BBQ pork ribs and melt-in-your-mouth beef brisket; flaky biscuits (often served with sausage gravy; an ode to the South); Tex-mex fajitas, drunken beans, carne asada tacos, and Chico's migas; the best Vietnamese food I've ever had (including Vietnamese roast chicken and sticky rice and bowls of rice noodles topped with crisp-fried pork rolls); chicken fried steak with cream gravy (um, never my favorite, but it was my brother-the-vegetarian's most requested meal as a child); and lots of pecan everything.

Much of the food in Texas is not for the faint of heart. It is hearty down-home grub. Very hearty. But when it's done right, it is oh so delicious. And here in California, it is quite difficult to find. I often woke to the smell of my mom's biscuits in the oven, and when I first moved here I sought out those delicious, light, and flakey treats. The best that I've found so far are at Ella's, but given that the restaurant is not only out of the way for me, and way too busy on weekends, I took to making my own.

Over the years I've not only perfected my biscuit hands, but also my biscuit recipe. I find that baking powder biscuits are lighter and fluffier than buttermilk biscuits, but you get a lot more flavor from buttermilk. I also tend to use both butter and vegetable shortening in my biscuits, so I maximize my flavor:flake ratio (I use the same philosophy with my pastry dough).

This recipe has been adapted from numerous classic baking powder and buttermilk biscuit recipes (all of which, including mine, are quite similar). Remember that the key to successful biscuits is not overworking the dough. Mix it JUST until it comes together and try to work quickly and lightly.

Buttermilk Biscuits

2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup vegetable shortening
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into chunks
2/3 cup buttermilk

Preheat the oven to 425F and place the rack just above the middle of the oven. Butter a sturdy baking sheet.

In a mixing bowl, using a fork, stir together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Sprinkle the shortening and butter over the flour and, using a pastry cutter or two table knives, cut the shortening and butter into the flour until it is about the size of small peas. Run your fingers through the flour mixture to make sure there aren't any big chunks hiding out. Add the buttermilk all at once and stir together just until the dough comes together.

Dump the dough onto a floured work surface and lightly press together into a disk about 1/2-inch thick. Cut out biscuits using a 2 1/2-inch biscuit cutter place on the baking sheet about 1 inch apart.

Bake for about 12 minutes until the tops are golden. Enjoy with a drizzle of local honey or fresh strawberry jam.

And don't let your dog steal the biscuits! (He has good taste)