"Links around the Bay" is an occasional series discussing events and interesting blog posts in the Bay Area.

Events
The Japan Society is hosting an event at Medicine with Elizabeth Andoh, author of "Washoku: Recipes From the Japanese Home Kitchen" (Ten Speed Press). We bought this book in January and it has quickly become a favorite in our home. The event will be a multi-course dinner at Medicine along with a lecture by Ms. Andoh. Event Date: March 23.
Buy tickets from the Japan Society webpage.

June Taylor is teaching a marmalade making class!
More info on her site. (via Mighty Foods)

UC Berkeley is hosting a Spring Lecture Series about Food Politics. The lectures are each Wednesday at 4 pm on campus. For more info, check out my post on Life Begins at 30.

Here are some interesting blog posts from Bay Area Bloggers:

Joy has a very entertaining post about Eccolo, an Italian restaurant on 4th Street in Berkeley. (Confessions of a Restaurant Whore)

It used to be that when you paid a visit to the parking hell known as Fourth Street in Berkeley, you had two decent dining options: Cafe Rouge and O Chame. Now this is great if you've got a severe meat jones going on (Cafe Rouge) or if you want Udon that will transport your soul to a plane of bliss (O Chame) but not so great if you're not feeling particularly carnivorous or noodle-ous. That all changed when Eccolo came to town.

The Finicky Lawyer gives us the "411 on (415)". (415) is the new restaurant at the Jewish Community Center that I have been interested in trying. (The Finicky Lawyer)

Although open barely two weeks, (415) Lounge is already showing the marks of a see-and-be-scene spot, along the lines of G Bar and Matrix Fillmore. The decor, with sumptuous red walls, black tables and chairs, and tiger print painted concrete floor, is lavish enough to forgive the kitschy Asian motif if you overlook the faux Asian lettering of "(415)," emblazened on the sign outside and on the menu-- just in case you can't tell that this is supposed to be an Asian-influenced bar and restaurant.

Cookiecrumb made salt! If you read the Eat Local Challenge posts last August, you may remember that Cookiecrumb had a failed attempt at salt making. Six months later, she and "Cranky" successfully made local salt from the sea. (I'm Mad and I Eat)

OK, maybe not fleur de sel, but definitely Sodium of the Sea. It has a slight beige hue, is still a bit moist (I stopped the boiling before it got bone dry), and clumps in lovely little flakes. It tastes like salt. I'm very proud.

Most cultures have some sort of traditional "pocket" or meat pie food. It's quite simple -- they're very portable, easy to make, and can be a great way to use up leftovers. And, of course, they don't have to be meaty.

Empanadas are the traditional Latin version of the hot pocket (Hot Pockets, natch, are the traditional American version). When I was little, my grandmother, who lived for years in South America, used to make a version with meat, golden raisins, olives, and hard-boiled egg. She would sometimes come to visit us without my grandfather, and cook weeks' worth of meals for him to heat up, including a freezer full of empanadas. When we went to Argentina and Brazil earlier this month, we tried as many versions as we could.

Empanadas come in many shapes, big and small, and can be baked, fried, or grilled. They can be filled with any sort of meat, cheese, vegetable, or sweet. There are endless variations of recipes that you can find online, but I am partial to my grandmother's version, which is very close to a traditional Argentine empanada.

On Friday we hosted a wee empanada-making party. I made a big hunk of dough and the meat filling ahead of time, and we had provisions for a cheese-spinach filling and a membrillo-ricotta one.

(I'll say right now that I am not much of a cook. I'm a discerning and learned eater, for sure -- and I am lucky to be married to a very ambitious, and natural, cook. I have an unnatural fear of dough, though this might be because my house is curiously missing a proper set of measuring spoons. My success at these empanadas proves that anyone -- really, anyone -- can make these.)

This dough is pretty hard to screw up. Even after I did, indeed, screw it up, it was easily fixed by Kim's capable hands. I doubled the recipe -- which in fact did not forestall the inevitable 11pm perceived need by certain people of extreme appetite to make another batch. Which is now sitting in our fridge, as yet unused. We will be eating empanadas all week.

4 cups flour
2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 cup cold butter, cut into small pieces
1 cup cold water

Sift together dry ingredients. Add butter, mix with fingers until mixture is crumbly. Add cold water a little at a time until dough sticks together. It should be smooth and well-integrated, which it wasn't, until Kim massaged it. The dough should be refrigerated at least half an hour.

For the filling, I used 2lbs lean beef and 1lb pork. (I also have no sense of scale. This was way too much meat. I repeat, We will be eating empanadas all week.) I'd suggest a mix of 1lb beef and 1/2lb pork. You can also use turkey or chicken or veal -- it will all work.

The proportions for these ingredients is really largely to taste. Slice an onion, saute in olive oil. Add garlic. Add meat, cook it all through. Add olives, sultana raisins, and cilantro, mix well. Season to taste. Finally, chop up a couple of hard-boiled eggs and add to the mixture. Let it cool before you fill the empanadas.

Filling the empanadas is where the party guests come into play -- put them to work. This would also be fun for kids, I think.

Roll the pastry into balls and then roll them out into approximately 5-inch diameter rounds. (I like these meat empanadas to be big, hand-sized.) Put a healthy spoonful or two in the center; rim the edge with egg wash (mix an egg with a splash of water). Guests generally enjoy a party where rimming is involved. Fold over the dough and crimp it tight to keep the mixture inside.

The oven should be at 375 degrees. Brush the egg wash over the empanadas and bake for about 30 minutes, or until brown. We had to turn them over to brown them, but this is because our oven is lame.

The other fillings were simple, just thrown together. We caramelized some onions and sauteed the spinach and mixed it all together with grated manchego cheese. This version can be made in smaller sizes -- about 3-inch diameter rounds.

We also made some with a spoonful of ricotta and a little membrillo paste. These would be good with a very mild cheese.

Eat. Dance party optional, but recommended.

The mere whisper of the word Provence awakens images of flowing lavender fields, charming picture-perfect towns and farmers markets overflowing with heads of lettuce still sparkling with the morning dew and fresh milk and cream ladled from tall metal canisters, all being sold by the quintessential French farmer.

Provence's traditional cuisine, "cuisine du soleil" is built on fresh produce, olive oil, herbs, tomatoes, garlic and of couse, le soleil (the sun). No surprise as Provence kisses the top west border of Italy so much of the cuisine has these Italian influences, or vice versa as the French would no doubt claim. It's similar to Switzerland looking like France, but I digress....

You will see the similarities in other distinctive Provencal dishes including ratatouille (eggplant) and soup de pistou (with fresh basil and pine nuts) ,daube (stew) and probably the most often associated with the south of France, bouillabaisse (fish soup with garlic, olive oil and saffron).

The delights don't stop there. The region is home to some world famous wines with ties all the way up to the sky. Opulent red wines include Cotes du Rhone and the noble Chateauneuf-du-Pape (new castle of the pope!). Crisp white and rose wines include Coteaux des Baux-en-Provence and Coteaux d'Aix-en-Provence and don't forget the apres-meal with a Beaumes-de-Venise Muscat, an unctuous amber dessert wine.

I learned this dish in cooking school. In our last quarter, we cooked for the restaurant within the school, aptly named l'Ecole (the school). This is so popular and such a traditional French dish, it is still on the menu!

Daube de Boeuf Arlesienne ~ Beef Stew from Arles

- 16 tiny Red Potatoes
- 16 Pearl Onions
- 16 Baby Carrots

- 16 pieces of Beef cut 1-1/2 inch cubes
- 1 Onion, large cut in fine dice
- 1 cup Dry White Wine (from Provence!)
- 1-2 teaspoons Herbes de Provence

- 20 Hazelnuts, toasted
- 1-2 slice Dry Bordelais Bread, toasted
- 2-3 cloves Garlic, chopped to paste
- 1 cup Parsley Leaves, chopped

- 2 Tomatoes, peeled, cut, seeded
- 20 Nicoise Olives
- 2 tablespoons Capers (drained)

- Parsley, chopped
- Thyme and Rosemary, small sprigs (pluche)

Step 1. Prepare your mise en place which means everything in its place (literally 'put in place'). Set out all the equipment you will need (pots and pans, spoons, etc) and all the ingredients. This way, you won't get half way through a recipe and realize you are missing a key ingredient and guaranteed, all the stores will be closed. I always keep a small bowl or plastic bag next to me for garbage such as carrot peelings, vegetable ends, garlic skins, etc.

Step 2. Prepare the vegetables
1. For these tiny red potatoes, the recipe calls for peeling only half way around so you can still see the beautiful red skin contrasted against the white flesh.
2. Trim and peel the baby carrots and pearl onions.
3. Cook the onions and carrots separately in boiling salted water. Shock (drop in ice water when done to stop the cooking), drain and set aside in a bowl. Save the cooking liquid.
4. Cook the potatoes in boiling salted water but do not shock. Set out on a plate on a piece of paper towel. Save the cooking liquid.
5. While the veggies are cooking, peel and cut the large onion into a fine dice.
6. Depending on the size of tomatoes, cut lengthwise into 6 or 8 sections from top to bottom. Cut out seeds and then set the slice of tomato skin side down and cut through as close to the skin as you can. Then cut the slice into triangles, approx 3 per slice, or what ever shape you want.

Step 3: Cook the beef
7. Brown the beef cubes in a pot in a little olive oil. Remove meat, set in a bowl.
8. Saute onions in the same pot. Add a little olive oil if the pan is dry. Move cooked onions to the bowl with the meat.
9. Deglaze the pot with the wine.
10. Add the meat and onions back to the pot. Add the herbs to the pot.
11. Add the cooking liquid from the vegetables to cover the meat. DO NOT SALT.
12. Cover the pot with foil or a lid. Cook for 1 to 1-1/2 hours on the stove so that the liquid is at a low simmer.

Step 4: Arlesienne mixture
13. Toast the hazelnuts and bread (cut into small pieces, any country or hearty bread will do) in 350F oven for 5-10 minutes
14. Chop the garlic to a paste.
15. Chop the parsley. Set aside a few pinches for garnish
16. Put the toasted bread, hazelnuts, garlic and parley in a food processor and pulse until finely chopped.

Step 5. EAT! :-)
17. Just as the meat is finishing up cooking, add the carrots, pearl onions, potatoes and Arlesienne mixture to the pot. Stir to combine and thoroughly warm the vegetables. The Arlesienne mixture will thicken the broth.
18. At the last minute, add the capers, olives and tomato triangles. Stir to combine and taste for seasoning. Add sea salt and fresh ground pepper to your taste.
19. Plate in a bowl and garnish with chopped rosemary, thyme and rosemary sprigs.

Bon appetite d'Arles et Vive la France!

Now most Provencal recipes beckon for a light rose but for this dish, and the fact that it is still winter with near arctic temperatures, I'd prefer a stronger wine from the north of Provence, one with papal ties preferably so for this I would serve a Chateauneuf-du-Pape, specifically one from Domaine du Banneret. I had the pleasure of tasting this glorious Rhone with a wine expert (not-so-coincidentally the nephew of the winemaker!) on a recent trip to Provence and what a treat! Cheers!

Check, Please! Bay Area is KQED's new local series featuring regular people reviewing Bay Area restaurants.

Visit the Check, Please! Bay Area blog to experience the restaurants from Episode 11:

1) Eric's: | restaurant information | reviews

2) Dishdash: | restaurant information | reviews

3) The Blue Plate: | restaurant information | reviews

Please feel free to join the discussion by posting comments about the show and your reviews of the featured restaurants!

You can now watch all episodes online! Check out the new photo gallery to view behind-the-scenes shots.

Going to Bonny Doon on a wine-sipping excursion is the perfect Bay Area day trip. You career down ninety blue miles of wave-crashing Pacific Coast Highway to the lush mountains of Santa Cruz in anticipation of wine slipping down your throat like the devil in velvet trousers. (Whether you do it in a BRAND! NEW! PRIUS! is, of course, your choice.) Ten miles north of Santa Cruz proper, you will drive inland for a few miles until you reach Pine Flat Road. And if the fog is smoking over the coast, have no fear, Bonny Doon's tasting rooms always seem to be curiously sozzled in dappled light.

While the tasting rooms aren't actually on Bonny Doon's own vineyard (their CA grapes are sunning themselves in Soledad and their European grapes are in, well, Europe), there's certainly nothing unlovely about the frankly picturesque wood shack in Santa Cruz. Plus, no matter how hard you try, you just won't run into Syrah snobs or Cab effetes here. The atmosphere is funky, rustic, and relaxed, yet it still manages to buzz happily with heavy offers of some damn good wine.

The tasting used to be free but really, the new charge of $3 isn't much to fork over for six tastes of very different wines. Plus, the tasting room staff are so exuberant about their liquid wares that if you are truly interested by the wines, they just might bring out a few extra bottles that they happen to have open. However, if you are lucky enough to be a member of one of their wine clubs -- they have two: Distinctive Esoteric Wine Network (DEWN) and Vino Voyages, which is basically a dinner party and European vacation in every shipment -- you taste for free and get 10% off any purchases you make.

Whatever you do, make sure you pack a lunch to help soak up all the Nebbiolos, Aglianicos, and Charbonos (I always land my group some choice cheeses, olives, cured meats, crusty sweet baguettes, and an apple or two) and spread out on the picnic tables in Bonny Doon's ridiculously idyllic grounds next to a crisply bubbling creek. If you're very blessed, you might have an unexpected guest join your picnic: a soft black cat of Falstaffian proportions, who certainly looks as though he knows his way around a wine barrel.

Aside from one or two "meh" reds and a Chenin Blanc that balked mightily when I made the mistake of serving it with Meyer lemon-simmered baby artichokes, I haven't met a Bonny Doon wine that I didn't want to immediately run out and buy a case of. Some of my personal perennial favorites are Old Telegram, Le Cigare Volant, Il Circo: Uva di Troia "La Violetta", Ca'del Solo Sangiovese, Clos de Gilroy, and the Thai-tastic Pacific Rim Riesling. However, the longer Bonny Doon's brainchild, Randall Grahm, lives, the more fantastical wines he scares up and the happier my glass becomes.

Bonny Doon Vineyard Tasting Rooms
10 Pine Flat Road
Santa Cruz, CA 95060

Monday-Sunday 11:00am-5:00pm
Open 7 days a week except major holidays
Phone: 831.425.4518

According to Terrance Brennan "artisanal" means made with passion, pride, enthusiasm, care and attention to detail. In a nutshell, this is his approach to cooking. In Artisanal Cooking Brennan shares recipes for his signature dishes and in the process you get to know the chef. Brennan spent time in the kitchens of Roger Verge's Le Moulin de Mougins, Taillevent, Le Tour d'Argent, and La Gavroche, not surprisingly his recipes and sensibilities are mostly French in origin with tastes of Mediterranean and US thrown in for good measure.

While I've never eaten at any of Terrance Brennan's restaurants, I have a feeling I would find plenty to please me on the menus. Chestnut spaetzle, wild salmon with horseradish crust, rabbit au Riesling with rutabaga "sauerkraut" would all tempt me greatly. Fortunately his cookbook Artisanal Cooking takes on these dishes and they are easier to accomplish than you might think. Most recipes have less than ten ingredients altogether and techniques which a confident home cook can easily manage.

In addition, the book is filled with little treasures in the form of marmalades, chutneys, flavored oils, flavored salts---recipes which can add a lot of flair to your standard repertoire. His section on cheeses and how to serve them is terrific.

My only criticism is that after reading through Terrance Brennan's Artisanal Cooking I'm still not completely sure I know what's meant by that term. When Brennan says "When seeking a butter, take an artisanal attitude and select a distinctive, creamery butter with a fat content of 80% or higher" I have to admit, I get a little confused. An artisanal attitude towards butter? But regardless it's a terrific book with lots of home cook friendly recipes to savor.

Stilton and Port Fondue
Serves 6

1 cup port
1/4 cup cornstarch
2 tablespoons cream cheese, at room temperature
12 ounces Stilton, crumbled (about 1 2/3 cups crumbled) at room temperature
kosher salt

In a medium bowl, combine the port and cornstarch, mixing well to dissolve the cornstarch. Pour the mixture into a fondue pot or heavy-bottomed, 2-quart, stainless steel saucepan, and bring to a boil over medium-high heat.

Once the liquid has come to a boil slowly, add the cream cheese, whisking continuously. Make sure each addition is completely melted and incorporated before the next addition. Then add the Stilton. Once all of the cheese has been added, cook over medium heat for one more minute.

Season with salt to taste. Remove from heat and serve.

The Reason Cream cheese is added to Stilton Stilton is a very fatty cheese, which means it separates more easily than other cheeses. The cream cheese helps stabilize the Stilton, preventing separation.

Embellishments Serve with cubed bread, Walnut bread is best, but any crusty bead will work well. Stilton Fondue may also be served with boiled fingerling potatoes, sauteed beef tips, pickled vegetables, air-dried beef, or cubed pears.

Reprinted by permission from Artisanal Cooking: A Chef Shares His Passion for Handcrafting Great Meals at Home, by Terrance Brennan and Andrew Friedman. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Copyright ©2005 by Terrance Brennan and Andrew Friedman. All rights reserved.

Recently, Jason and I have been discussing our "tribal influences." I had heard a theory that, when we are tired or ill or distressed, we all go back to the way that we were raised by our family or "tribe." I have had a bad cold in the past week, and was using that example to tell him that when I was a kid, "in my tribe everything was dropped and mom took care of us by making our favorite foods and making sure we had everything we needed," in an attempt to guilt him into waiting on me hand and foot (it worked).

Our tribe had one huge rule with food: we never ate cumin.

My mother's side of the family is the side that influenced me the most in the kitchen, and mom is 100% Mexican. Cumin is ubiquitous in most Mexican food, but our family never used it and grandma, a very strong influence on the rest of us, couldn't stand the stuff. We would be at a restaurant and she would take one taste of a dish and sniff and say "comino" with disgust, implying that she had been foiled once again by the evil ingredient. I learned early that cumin was not something that tasted good, and it seemed to ruin all food that it went into.

I didn't realize until I was well into my twenties what cumin even tasted like. I remember being at a restaurant on Haight street with my friend Molly -- she ordered a salad and asked me if I wanted a bite.

"No thanks, I saw that it has cumin in it."

"I know your family trained you to not to eat it, but I think if you give it a chance, you probably are going to like it, Jen," she said delicately. I tasted it and it wasn't nearly as offensive as I was led to believe. My head didn't spin around, and I lived to tell the story.

My family's dislike of cumin reaches all members of the family, and it's not uncommon to open a cookbook my mother has given me to find the cumin section jokingly crossed out. The picture above shows my copy of Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything book, where mom has crossed out the cumin section and written "aaa little girl!" because my grandmother used to call my sister and me "little girls."

Last week I called Grandma to quiz her about why she didn't like cumin:

"Did anyone use cumin in our family, Grandma? Was it just you who didn't use it?"

"No - no one from Sonora used it that I can think of, and even when we went to visit people in Guanajuato, they didn't use it either. I don't know why people use it -- you even find it places like Taco Bell."

"What don't you like about it?"

"I don't know ... I just don't like the taste, and I don't like how it keeps coming back on me. Why are you asking all these questions - are YOU using it?"

"Not in my Mexican food, I promise. But I do have some and I use it for Indian foods."

Grandma acquiesced that using it in food other than Mexican food was probably okay, and went on to ask me how I used it and in what form I bought it. One recipe that I have been making recently is Indian Spiced Peanuts, adapted from Martha Stewart's Hors d'Oeuvres Handbook. I really appreciate this book for it's specific directions and for inspiration with it's beautiful photography and inventive recipes. I adapted this recipe by cutting it in half and then increasing the spice. Martha's recipe calls for about 1/2 tablespoon of regular sugar, but I used Muscovado sugar because it adds another dimension of taste to the nuts and because it's not as sweet. Next time I make this, I would like to try out pepper other than cayenne - perhaps a smoked pimiento pepper from Happy Quail Farms.

Indian Spiced Peanuts (with cumin)
Makes 2.5 cups
Active Preparation Time: 15 minutes
Complete Cooking Time: 45 minutes

Ingredients

Shelled unsalted peanuts, 2.5 cups (12 oz)
Ground cumin , 1.5 tsp
Ground coriander, 1.5 tsp
Kosher salt , 1.5 tsp
Muscovado sugar, 1 tsp
Black pepper, 1/4 tsp
Cayenne pepper, 1/4 tsp
Toasted black sesame seeds, 1.5 tsp
1 large egg white

Preparation

1. Preheat the oven to 300° F.
2. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.
3. Combine cumin, coriander, salt, sugar, pepper, and cayenne in a small bowl.
4. Using a medium bowl, whisk the egg white until frothy.
5. Add spices from step 3 to the egg white and whisk to mix.
6. Add peanuts and sesame seeds to the mixture and stir to mix.
7. Spread peanut mixture on to the baking sheet into a single layer.
8. Bake in oven for approximately 30 minutes or until nuts appear dry and toasted. Stir the mixture once or twice during the toasting, making sure to keep the nuts in a single layer as much as possible.
9. Remove from oven and allow to cool before serving. You can store the nuts in an airtight container for up to a week.

Bay Area Bites, KQED's aggregate food blog, is dedicated to providing a variety of food-related information from the Bay Area and beyond. BAB bloggers are culinary professionals, food writers, and cookbook editors. Many have local food blogs of their own. Blogger profiles are online so you can learn more about each BAB contributor.

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These guidelines are:
1) BAB bloggers should avoid conflict of interest and personal involvement with restaurants when reviewing establishments.

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For comment guidelines see KQED's terms of service.

Pear Tart in a Cage ~ Tarte aux Poires en Cage

A light dessert in a pinch is poached pears in wine. It's easy, you can start it when you serve the appetizers, it's refreshing in the summer with a scoop of good ice cream or served warm, a cozy way to end a winter meal. If you have a special dinner coming up and want to serve something elegant but not complicated, have been working late every night and have no time, fear not. You can take this poached pear concept one step further and have a visually beautiful dessert that will wow your friends. This one does require a trip to the kitchen gadget store - or a trip to heaven in my case - for a funny little torture device looking thing called a lattice cutter. Roll this across your pastry dough, pull apart gently et voila...lattice!

A docker for poking holes in puff pastry and a lattice slicer for making lattice designs

This recipe calls for pears, frangipane, and puff pastry. That's it, c'est tout! Puff pastry is not for the faint of heart and usually takes two days to make. I'll save that for Shuna, the resident pastry chef extraordinaire, as only she can describe. Suffice to say I am tres (very) lazy so I am more than happy to buy pre-made puff pastry (I know you are cringing Shuna!) for a quick last minute dessert or quiche. Anything to make life easier these days...

Pear Tart in a Cage ~ Tarte aux Poires en Cage

- 2 pkgs puff pastry
- 14 oz sugar
- 2 cups water
- 2 pears
- 1/2 lemon
- 1/2 cup frangipane (almond paste)
- 1 egg
- 3-4 tbsp cream
- 3-4 tbsp apricot jam
- warm water

1. Heat oven to 350F.

2. Unroll thawed puff pastry flat and refreeze

3. Peel the pears, cut in half, core with a melon baler and rub with the lemon half.

4. Bring the sugar and water (simple syrup) to a simmer and add the pears. Cover with a damp dish cloth and simmer for approximately 15 minutes or until only a slight resistance to a knife. When done, set aside pears on a paper towel on a dish.

5. Take the dough out of the freezer and roll the lattice cutter across one of the sheets. You might need to go over the slits with a paring knife.

6. Slowly pull apart the dough so a beautiful lattice forms. (I let my dough get to soft so it was hard to pull apart evenly. Do this when the dough is as cold as possible but not so cold it breaks.) Chill.

7. Take the other sheet of puff pastry and cut out the shape of a pear. Chill.

You can do all this ahead of time. To assemble and bake:

8. Take out the pear cut-outs pastry. Place a small scoop of frangipane in the scopped out part of the pear and set it, cut side down, on the pastry.

9. In a small bowl combine the egg and cream. Brush the pastry around the sides of the pear.

10. Take out the lattice pastry and cut out the same pear shapes. You can make a cut out from a piece of cardboard such as the back of a pad of paper. Brush the top of the lattice pastry with egg wash.

11. Lay each piece gently on top of the pear (the colder the dough the easier to handle). Press down gently and trim the edges with a paring knife.

12. Bake for approximately 15-20 minutes until it turns a golden brown.

13. Combine apricot jam and water and microwave until warm. Mix it together then strain it to get out the clums of apricot. Brush it over the pears when they come out of the oven to give it a shiny glaze.

Garnish it with caramel squiggles or a small scoop of the best vanilla ice cream you can find. The WOW factor will be very high. Bon Appetit!

I've just returned from two and a half weeks in South America, a vacation with my husband and his family. We spent five days in Buenos Aires, then five days in Patagonia, south of the Lake District, and the final five or so days in Rio de Janeiro -- leaving, shamefully, just days before Carnevale.

Though currently thoroughly enveloped in the fog of a cold, a reliable post-vacation ailment, memories of food flit through my addled head. Oh, the stories I could tell! Of dulce de leche, of empanadas. Of soft, cheesy tamales, rich feijoada, and vibrant tropical juices. Good god, the membrillo! These are a few of the obsessions I returned with (along with this snotty virus).

But the abiding obsession I keep coming back to is cachaca, the Brazilian liquor distilled from sugarcane. (An aside: we had fresh sugarcane juice at this market in Ipanema -- the vendor pushed the long, fibrous stalks through the juicing machine and produced a cup of pure joy -- or, as he called it, Brazilian Viagra.)

(Further aside: our Rio trip is short on photographs, since we were strongly warned not to take the camera out, especially when sitting outside. I regret this, since Rio was much safer than people made it out to be, and while being aware of our surroundings was important, we could have relaxed a little and taken more photos.)

Most Americans know cachaca, if they know it at all, from drinking caipirinhas -- a heady mix of crushed limes, sugar, and cachaca. Caipirinhas appear to be consumed like water in Rio, fuel for long nights of samba. (I speak in cliches? No, I don't.)

(Typographical aside: cachaca is spelled with a wriggly thing under the second 'c' -- so it's pronounced cachasa -- but the HTML coding eludes me at this time.)

The Wikipedia definition of cachaca reports that only 1.5 percent of the spirit is exported -- and that mostly goes to Portugal, Paraguay, and Germany. We mostly see the Pitu brand -- which works fine for caipirinhas but only hints at the extent of possibilities for the liquor.

At the Academia Da Cachaca, in Rio's tony Leblon neighborhood, the spirit lives large. Their menu features hundreds of bottles of cachaca -- all described in intricate detail, from the type of wood it's casked in to obscure minutiae about its flavor profile.

Caipirinhas are good, very good. But the Caipira Academica, one of the special cocktails at the Academia, was transcendent. Very simple: small lemons, sliced thin and crushed with honey, with cachaca Seleta. It was sweet and tart like a caipirinha, but the honey added depth and warmth, and the rich, golden hue of the drink was like the sun setting over Ipanema beach (I speak in cliches? Yes, I do. It's the cold.)

Cachaca isn't only drunk in cocktails; the different varieties await discovery when not masked by citrus and sugar. Straight cachaca is a little like grappa -- though not as fiery. We tried two shots -- the St Ines was clean and fresh; the Canarihua soft and honeyish. We also had a shot of the cachaca with honey and lemon -- like the Academica cocktail, but more intense and sweet.

With a menu so extensive, it was hard to leave, and disappointing that we had discovered the bar only on our last night. But today I'm on a mission -- to BevMo, to find out what sort of cachacas they carry. Tomorrow, a Latin-flavored goat-eating birthday fiesta will be fueled with caipirinhas. It's cold and rainy, you say? Not in Rio.