Not the usual cheese, rice or ground beef, but tofu gets stuffed into these peppers.
As my husband readied the grill for Italian sausages the other night, he looked at me dumbfounded as I pulled out a box of tofu from the fridge.
Yes, silken tofu is the surprising ingredient in these otherwise Mediterranean-influenced stuffed peppers.
Leave it to the one and only Nigel Slater to come up with this simple and inspired riff on a classic, replacing the usual rice, ground meat or cheese in stuffed peppers with custardy-soft tofu instead.
“Baked Peppers with Tofu and Olives” is from the noted British food writer’s newest cookbook, “A Cook’s Book” (Ten Speed Press), of which I received a review copy.
The 500-page book is a collection of 150 recipes along with evocative stories from this home cook’s home cook. These are unfussy recipes, many with 10 or fewer ingredients, full of an appealing carefree spirit.
Olive oil-poached steelhead trout at The Elderberry House.
When Ethan de Graaff was just 13 years old, he knew there was no other choice but to become a chef.
Now, the head chef of The Elderberry House in Oakhurst, he explains with a chuckle, “Once my dad started using mayo as a sauce on everything, I knew what I had to do.”
Today, he oversees the menu at the fine-dining restaurant at the Old World Chateau du Sureau, a 9-acre oasis in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains, not far from Yosemite National Park. He works in conjunction with Culinary Director Chris Flint, the former chef de cuisine at New York’s storied Eleven Madison Park and former executive chef of Michelin-starred Maude in Los Angeles.
Also tasked with overseeing sister property First & Oak in Solvang, Flint was hired in late 2022. Since his arrival, he’s brought back the restaurant’s tasting menu and leaned into sourcing locally even more.
Last week, when I was invited in as an overnight guest of the Relais & Chateau property, I had a chance to experience the roll-out of his first full new menu.
Chateau du Sureau.Keys to your guest room.
You might say my visit was more than two decades in the making. Way back when, while staying at another property near Yosemite, my husband and I had made dinner reservations at The Elderberry House. Unfortunately, it happened to be one of those precarious winters with such a deluge of snow that we were alarmed to see a snow plow had gone off the side of the road. Because the onslaught kept forcing the closure of the roads, we ended up canceling our reservations, fearing that even if we made it to the restaurant, we might never be able to get out again.
Finally making it here was definitely worth the wait. Imagine pulling up to a turreted estate in the European countryside, and you get an idea of what Chateau du Sureau is like.
Say hello to my new big friend — the playfully decorated concrete fermenter at Reustle-Prayer Rock Vineyards.
Umpqua Valley, OR — Wine-growing here dates back to the 1880s, when German immigrants who once worked for St. Helena’s Beringer Vineyards (the oldest continuously operating winery in Napa), planted the first wine grapes in this valley.
More than 30 wineries now make their home here, producing more than 40 varieties of wine.
On a recent trip to Oregon, I had a chance to visit three of them, courtesy of Travel Oregon.
Reustle-Prayer Rock Vineyards
Few wineries in Oregon boast their own wine cave. Reustle-Prayer Rock Vineyards in Roseburg does, and boy, is it a sight to see.
The wine cave built on the side of a hill, one of the few such winery caves in Oregon.Part of the cave’s ceiling.
Stephen and Gloria Reustle, husband-and-wife owners, added theirs in 2008. It was built by the same man who made the Indiana Jones Adventure at Disneyland, which gives a hint to its Old World-style taken up a big fanciful notch.
