Gordon Ramsey audition, waiting on the Symposium, Petite Sirah love, packages in the mail, tri tip and pork belly

CBS has CSI; NBC has Law and Order. Both have spun off myriad incarnations.

FOX has Gordon Ramsey. Hells, Kitchen, Kitchen Nightmares, Cookalong, and coming later this year Masterchef.

Masterchef is another BBC import, and turns amateur but passionate cooks into cheftestants, competing against each other, until only one is left.

I am going to be attending a casting call in San Francisco later this month, bringing the elements to plate a prepared dish with five minutes preparation – a different thermos for each part of the dish, presentation plate, spoon, tongs, cutting board, knife, steel, towels, napkin.

I’m bringing my involtini on polenta with homemade Italian red sauce, and a bottle of red wine. I think wine is part of a meal, and ingredient of the dish. So I’ll also be bringing wine, corkscrew, and wineglass as well as all of the food pack. I think I may look for a cooler with wheels and handle.

I’m hoping my brother auditions in either New Orleans or Los Angeles, we could be the Masterchef version of Top Chef’s Voltaggio brothers.

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I applied for a fellowship award to attend this year’s Symposium for Professional Wine Writers at Meadowood Napa Valley, February 16-19, 2010.

On the Symposium  website’s page for Fellowship Opportunities, it says, “awardees will be notified by telephone and or e-mail by January 8, 2010, and their names will be posted on the Fellowship page at the Symposium website…those who are not awardees will be notified by e-mail.”

Last night, looking at the site’s page for registration, I found the statement, “Fellowship recipients will be notified by January 15, 2010.”

I thought I would know whether the writing samples I provided scored well enough with five judges to earn a Fellowship award by tomorrow, and I was already antsy, anxious, at waiting. Now I think I may have to wait another week before finding out my fate.

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I did win two tickets to a terrific food and wine tasting Friday evening, February 19, 2010 (and yes, I can attend the Symposium and tasting on February 19, 2010), Dark & Delicious 2010 in Alameda, CA. Dark & Delicious pairs Petite Sirah from great producers with foods prepared by some of the top chefs in the Bay Area.

I am hugely excited to taste great wines and foods, I love Petite Sirah, so this is right up my alley. I am also going to get to meet some other wine bloggers, including Eric Hwang. Eric handles social media marketing for Windsor Vineyards, I used to handle tradeshow marketing for Windsor Vineyards.

I think there might be a few tickets left, here’s the link to info: http://psiloveyou.org/dd10/

Thank you Jo Diaz for running a ticket contest.

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The mailman has been busy. I received the winter issue of Washington Tasting Room, an attractive, colorful new wine magazine, featuring beautiful photography and solid written content. Recipes, feature articles on selected wineries, a tasting room calendar of special events, and wine columns make this a worthy stand out magazine. I love that the writing puts me right in some of Washington’s tasting rooms, tasting wines; my wine knowledge is limited to California wines, mostly north coast wines, so any magazine that can educate me while entertaining is a must read.

I loved reading about Yakima’s downtown restaurants waiving corkage fees for folks who bring a wine bought that day from a neighboring downtown Yakima tasting room. The news piece quotes a restaurant owner “We’ll wash two glasses any day to sell more dinners…the program is working. The wineries love it and they’re sending customers our way.”

Thanks to John Vitale for sending me this complimentary copy.

From the Wine Appreciation Guild, I received Dr. Richard Baxter’s “Age Gets Better With Wine.” You’ll read my review when I read it – I’m in the middle of a novel so embarrassingly trashy I won’t share the title. I’ve skimmed Age Gets Better With Wine, and I look forward to getting into it soon; with 20 pages of references listed, it appears to be a solid work, and yet my skim suggested a user friendliness. More later.

Also from the Wine Appreciation Guild, I received a new wine preservation system. I am half way through my evaluation of the product and will post a review over the weekend.

Thanks to the Wine Appreciation Guild.

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Completely not related to wine or food, the mailman also delivered a package from a good friend Mike Jasper. The outside of the package was torn, trampled, dirty, cut, a letter of apology from the post office was included. The contents appear perfect however. Jasper sent me a boxed set of 4 discs covering the complete season one of A&E’s Rollergirls. I think Jasper actually knows some of the girls, and when visiting him a while back, we watched an episode and I was stunned by the “there is room on television for anything” aspect of the show’s existence. I am delighted to receive this fine gift, although it will likely wait some time before I view it.

Jasper also sent the October 2009 issue of Playboy so I could read the feature on the 1970s Oakland Raiders.

While I might read this issue of Playboy for the articles, I’m pretty sure my 12 year old son wouldn’t even glance at the Raider article, so I have to put this away.

Thanks Jasper.

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I was just going to put a pair of tri tips on the grill, when I got a call from my local grocery…my order of pork belly is available for me to pick up. Hurray, this is going to be a great week of eating in the Cesano house.

I’m thinking of trying Top Chef cheftestant Kevin Gillespie’s pork belly recipe.

As always, I’ll let you know how it goes.

 

A week in L.A.

I am finally back at home sitting in front of my computer, fingers stabbing away at the keys that will result in an overdue new blog entry. A week away from my computer, from writing, I missed it. I missed home, as I was away, down south, for work and pleasure.

I worked the three days of the Memorial Day weekend at Fiesta Hermosa in Hermosa Beach, California, about 20 minutes south of LAX. I spiel my product endlessly at shows with good attendance, and the resultant sales is how I make a living. During one of my spiels this weekend, I recognized the person I was talking to from either film or television but couldn’t place him. The person I brought with me to work the show with also recognized him, but couldn’t place him. Finally, my business associate whispered “big brother”.

I am a reality TV junkie. I have watched seasons of Survivor, Big Brother, Idol, Top Chef, Hell’s Kitchen, Project Runway, Charm School…you name it, I’ve watched it. If I could only choose one, it would have to be Big Brother; the fish bowl purity of the show appeals to me. The tall, smiling, man in front of our booth was Zach Swerdzewski from Big Brother season 8. Zach came in third, losing only to the father/daughter pair of Evil Dick and Danielle.

Season 8 of Big Brother was one of the better casts, starring the broken down old rocker, Evil Dick, who used profanity laced invective, tearing apart fellow houseguests, insulting others for their sexuality, religion, and any other button he could expose. Other houseguests included Jameka, a pious black woman; Amber, a meth using drink slinging single mom from Vegas; Eric, America’s player; Jessica, Eric’s showmance; Dustin and Joe, the hilariously bitter gay ex-couple; Danielle, Evil Dick’s emaciated daughter; and Zach, a guy too nice by far to play in the same game as Evil Dick.

When we were able to place the person from our Fiesta Hermosa booth inside the Big Brother house, he let us know that yes, we remembered correctly, his name was Zach and he was from season 8. I was surprised that other reality TV addicts in the crowd didn’t recognize him, but Zach seemed to operate in a cloak of anonymity; we were the only people who seemed to recognize him. Zach was gracious in spite of our fantarding, posed for pictures with us and even gave us hats from his clothing line, Dolphin Crash. Oh, and Zach now has one of our Corkers. It was really nice to meet someone so genuinely nice.

We also saw Jason “Wee-Man” Acuña of Jackass fame. We did not fantard over Wee-Man, although my 12 year old son was excited that we had seen him.

With the show done, I stayed an extra day in Southern California and visited Metropolis Books at 440 Main in the core of downtown Los Angeles. A high school friend, Julie Swayze, owns the store and we got to spend an hour in conversation. The store is a jewel, an independent book store, and you should visit the store if in Los Angeles. Eat at the Nickel Diner when in the area, the entire area is on the verge of a revitalization, and both the book store and the diner are the future of downtown Los Angeles.

Through Julie, I picked up two more books by Anthony Bourdain, and a book that a friend, Marie Poirer Martinsson, recommended to me, “No One Sees God” by Michael Novak. The last book inspired conversation between Julie and me about spirituality, religion, and the non preachiest preacher man I know, Dean Anderson, another class mate of ours.

Finally, I drove through the Alexander Valley of Sonoma County on the way home today, stopping to get out of my car and walk in some vineyards. I am Frasier like, I know most people are Daphne like; I want to share what I know and love about wine in a way that makes it understandable, maybe even inspiring someone to try a wine instead of a beer with a meal or when out with friends. I know my wine writings will never be #1 on any most read list, but I will continue to write about wine on a regular basis. Perhaps I’ll get better at writing about it, or perhaps more people will find it a palatable topic as my readership grows.