"Piperade" My Restaurant Review and Journey into Basque Cooking

IT WAS OUR SIXTH WEDDING ANNIVERSARY... and I did not have any restaurant reservations. It was a Saturday night and I knew it would be tough to secure reservations at the last minute in San Francisco, but I was determined to find a good restaurant, with a romantic atmosphere and food worth spending a lot of money on. If it had not been for my natural inclination to procrastinate, this task would have been completed easily, weeks prior. So onto Yelp.com I went, searching for highly rated restaurants that would fulfill my desires. It seemed that all of the favorites were booked until I stumbled onto the site of Piperade. There was one spot open for an early reservation at 5:30. Based on the immediate reviews that I scanned over and the 4 star rating out of 350+ reviews, I figured I couldn't go wrong and took the reservation.

Piperade is a restaurant owned and operated by Chef Gerald Hirigoyen. The restaurant features what Hirigoyen calls "West Coast Basque Cuisine." A native of the Basque Region, Hirigoyen has twice been named Best Chef in the Bay Area by San Francisco Magazine and was one of Food & Wine Magazine's Top New Chefs in America. He has also received numerous write ups and recommendations from publications such as the New York Times, Bon Appetit, SF Examiner and many more.

The Basque Country is a nation that runs along the border of Spain and France. The Greater Basque Country also includes some areas in both aforementioned countries. Naturally, the cuisine in this region has strong Spanish and French influence, but there are also many regional specialties unique to the Basque country influenced by the mountainous regions on one side and the ocean on the other. Fresh and Salted Seafood, Cured Meats, Peppers, Lamb, Ciders, and Sheep Cheeses are staples of the Basque diet.

We started of our meal with two of the small plates: Piquillo Peppers stuffed with Goat Cheese, Pine Nuts and Golden Raisins and the Calamari "A La Plancha" with cantaloupe, mint and lemon confit

Piquillo Peppers stuffed with Goat Cheese, Pine Nuts and Golden Raisins

Calamari " A La Plancha" with cantaloupe, mint and lemon confit

They were both fantastic and had us eagerly anticipating our main course. We took the recommendation of our waiter and paired a Basque white wine with our meal and ordered a bottle of Txomin Etxaniz. The wine had a slight effervescent quality to it and was a perfect companion to the meal. For my main course, I had the Sea Bass with Brussel Sprouts and Frothed Butter with herbs. It was simple and perfect. The Bass had the texture of lobster and melted away in my mouth the instant I bit into it. I could not have been happier.

Sea Bass

For Dessert I had the Orange Blossom Beignets, which were crispy, light and perfect. In the photo there is only two of them, but originally there were three, I just couldn't wait to eat one. They were the perfect end to a wonderful meal.

Orange Blossom Beignets

The other interesting thing is the classic Basque dish section on the menu. There is one specialty everyday of the week that you can order. Perhaps I will try to go on a Tuesday next time so that I can try the Sauteed Calamari in Ink Sauce "Txipiroa." Overall the restaurant provided a perfect atmosphere, wonderful food, courteous, attentive service and Beignet so delicious, I do not feel that I could overstate their case. Or maybe I was just really hungry!? We will see as I will certainly be returning to this spot in the near future.

Here you can see by the expression on my face how satisfied I am with the stuffed pepper.

I started to study Basque Cuisine and Chef Hirigoyen in particular. I found that he had a few cookbooks out and went to my local Barnes & Noble to look for one. It was my lucky day and the nice lady behind the customer service counter walked over to the regional cooking section and pulled out a book called "Pintxos: Small Plates in the Basque Tradition"

"Pintxos: Small Plates in the Basque Tradition"

Pintxos: Small Plates in the Basque Tradition
Exactly what I was looking for! So I got right to work. I started off by going to the store to see what was fresh. I ended up getting some Sea Scallops and Calimari tubes and tentacles. I decided to make the Scallops with Lychee Gazpacho and the Fried Calamari with Romesco Sauce. Both recipes turned out to be very satisfying and have me looking forward to trying our more recipes from this book. The mistake I made was trying to make the Lychee Gazpacho when Lychees are not in season. I used canned Lychees, which I can only imagine, could not compare in flavor or texture to the fresh fruit. Do not make this mistake. The Calamari turned out wonderful, though Milana said I put too much salt (I did not agree).

Coating the Calamari in Rice Flour

Broiling the Tomatoes and Peppers for the Romesco Sauce

Scallops with Lychee Gazpacho

Fried Calamari with Romesco Sauce

Of course, I had to make a few substitutions for ingredients I could not immediately find, like the Pimente D'Espelette, which he specifically says there is no suitable replacement for. Regardless, I used another smoked Spanish Paprika in its place. For the most part I followed the recipes exactly and so I will not post them here, but I encourage everyone interested to go pick up this cookbook or have a meal at Piperade. As I learn more about this type of cuisine, I will undoubtedly figure out my own way of doing things and have variations of classic recipes that will be mine that I can post here for your reading enjoyment.

The Omnivores Dilemma = Required Reading

I picked up this book, "The Omnivores Dilemma" after watching the documentary "Food Inc." What I was expecting was a text book like march through the controversy surrounding the American food industry. What I found instead, was a mind bending thriller, which threw me from page to page, challenging my way of life and causing me to pause, several times, get up and look at the ingredients listed on the side panels of the food I hand to my children every day (AAHH! Chicken nuggets are EVIL!!).

The most interesting part of the book is all about the corn (and soy) industry. An industry subsidized with tax payer's money, to the point that the actual farmers could not survive without the supplemented money. The mantra of more, more, more, drives the mentality of the farmer, letting concepts such as nutrition, quality, and sustainability, become neglected to the extent that they are not even part of the equation anymore.

You know that thing that happens when you learn a new word, and then no less than 2 weeks later, you hear that word again and think "If I hadn't learned that word two weeks ago, I would have never noticed it this time around. I would have just passed over it." That happened to me, in a way, with this book. Pollan talks about the quality of an egg at a farm called Polyface farms. He talks about the bright orange color of the yolk and how it would stand up straight and tall due to the nutritional diet and general happiness of the chicken that had laid it. I had two cartons of eggs. One of the "organic" Costco variety and one from a barn raised, cage free,  family farm in Rippon CA. I never would have noticed prior to reading this book, but there was a world of difference between these two eggs. As I cracked the "organic" Costco egg onto my griddle, the yolk was a pale yellow color and fell flat with the egg white, while the family farm egg had the same qualities Pollan talked about with the Polyface egg, bright orange and strong.

Pollan not only calls into question the industrial food industry, but also the new big industrial organic food industry and how it may suffer from many of the same ailments as it's conventional counterpart.

Why shouldn't I know where the food I eat comes from. I get that some things you just can't get local. Some things you don't need too. Coffee, sugar, tea, other dry goods with naturally long shelf lives, but it is still important to know who the companies are, and be able to hold them accountable to a high standard of cleanliness and ensure they are using sustainable practices. Do we need more government intervention? New safety standards? Or how about a whole new rule book, that does not set the standard of success based on quantity, but instead on purity and sustainability.

But until then, I will begin to hunt for local food, from people I can talk to, from farms and ranches I can visit and evaluate myself. Of course I still have a LONG way to go with all of this. There is still a box of C&H refined sugar in my cupboard, there is still a couple pounds of Kirkland Beef in my freezer. I don't expect that I will suddenly be able to just shut down everything and switch over to an entirely local/seasonal diet. That would not be realistic at all. After all, I have been living at the whim of the industrial food market for 29 years now. No, this does not call for instant and extreme measures. This calls for a well thought transition to a more sustainable, local, seasonal diet.