Salsa Savvy

Finding new ways to assess the sauce

By Marina Wolf

WELL, IT’S OFFICIAL: Salsa has become an all-American institution. In 1996 it surpassed ketchup as the most-used condiment in the United States, and now it is turning up in that most patriotic of pastimes: the food contest.

Some cynics might consider this just another example of America’s appropriation approach to food: take it in and make it ours. But I see it as a triumph, a major leap forward in our country’s consciousness about its own ethnic, cultural, and culinary diversity.

We have moved beyond hot dogs and apple pie–not a great diet to begin with–into an open acknowledgment of enchiladas, burritos, and spicy sauces as important additions to the American table.

A healthy debate on the merits of various salsas is appealing (though actually tasting 15 salsas in a row is, to me, as enjoyable as licking a scrubbing pad for an hour). Unfortunately, the consensus of most American eaters seems to have settled on one of two manifestations of the salsa ideal: (1) diced underripe vegetables stewing in a swamp of citric acid, or (2) boiled and bottled tomato pulp, whose most authentically ethnic quality is the artwork on the label.

The reality of salsa is much more interesting. Salsa in Spanish simply means sauce, and can apply to any number of sauces, some of which have been around as long as chile peppers have been cultivated: thousands of years. Salsas may be stewed, raw, roasted, grilled. Chile peppers are the defining ingredient, but the type and amount vary wildly. Tomatoes are usually indicated in traditional Central and South American salsas, but in the wake of fusion cooking and the increased awareness of regional specialties, even this boundary has been blown wide open, making room for such ingredients as corn, tomatillos, mangoes, apples, strawberries, and even sweet potato.

In the face of such anarchy, salsa competitions are a natural response, a community’s attempt to impose meaning and order on an unruly universe of possibilities. But the pressure is on to assess the entries according to the old rules, the Pace-based paradigm. Too often we elevate one or two of the simpler characteristics to the sole deciding factor and downplay others that are as important, or at least as interesting, to the avid salsa consumer. Tomato and nontomato is a cliché, as is the line between commercial and home-cooked (who exactly is being served by that distinction?). But what about chunky vs. smooth? Such vastly different approaches require almost completely different strategies in order to assess texture and flavor. (Peanut-butter aficionados will understand what is at stake here.)

What of the many gradations of heat? To keep “chile bullies” from dominating the field, we could just as easily divide and judge entries according to scientifically measured Scoville heat ratings.

Or–stay with me here–we could rethink the whole angle of competition altogether, make it less ferocious and more functional. The question would not be which salsa is best, but how well a given salsa works for the purpose for which it was mixed. Is it a dip, a side dish, a last-minute condiment, or an essential ingredient in a casserole? Is it served at parties or just at family dinners?

These are essential questions in determining the feasibility of a salsa.

FORM SHOULD follow function, in salsa as in everything. Smooth salsa is tricky in social situations: the liquid responds to gravity and the incline of a chip much more dramatically than does its chunky-cut counterpart. Considering the distance between the lips and the dip bowl, and the peculiar attraction between salsa and clothing (especially white silk T-shirts), party salsa should be chosen and created carefully.

A good party salsa has distinct flavors and crisp textures, whatever the ingredients, and enough substance to rest sturdily on a chip. In a casserole, however, this chunky salsa only confuses things. There’s too much going on, too much separateness and disunity. A smooth salsa, on the other hand, is just the thing to provide a common backdrop for the dish’s constituent parts.

The “topper” category would be the most challenging, if only because of the size of the pool. Every new restaurant has at least one kind of salsa on the menu, trailing artistically on or around a piece of protein. The field is wide open for contenders: smooth and chunky, cooked and fresco, fruit and vegetable. The salsa could be simply chile peppers moistened with tomato juice, or it could be the reverse, a tomato salad with a hint of heat.

But the judging would be simple: put a spoonful of each entry over a tiny piece of fish. Does it overpower or enhance? Does it clash or complement? Is it super or just superfluous?

I understand that this might be a difficult proposal for Americans to swallow. The whole thing smacks of socialism, of a touchy-feely “we’re all OK” mentality that is anathema to the fine American tradition of no-holds-barred competition.

But I would urge organizers of salsa contests to take the plunge, even if it does mean encouraging the sweet-potato crowd. The soul of salsa is in its diversity. And salsa lovers everywhere deserve a bite of the whole enchilada.

From the May 11-17, 2000 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Photograph by Michael Amsler

Culinary Chameleon

Former Babette’s chef shines at her own Water Street Bistro in Petaluma

By Paula Harris

STEPHANIE Rastetter stands on the restaurant’s outdoor patio squinting her eyes against the morning sunlight and sweeps her dark hair back with one hand as she surveys the murky Petaluma River flowing beyond. Water Street Bistro is her place.

At age 36, dressed in casual baggy denim overalls and chunky black lace-up shoes, Rastetter looks more like a carefree college student playing hooky from psych class than a celebrated master chef and new restaurant owner.

Who would guess that this warm, chatty young woman used to be one of two chefs at Babette’s restaurant, a Sonoma County icon that consistently turned out some of the most innovative, expensive, and lauded cuisine in the Bay Area?

For five years, the upscale French restaurant, concealed down an alley off Sonoma Plaza, was the county’s answer to Yountville’s French Laundry and San Francisco’s Fleur de Lys. Its five-course, prix-fixe haute cuisine dinners became legendary among bon vivants and celebrants alike.

And Rastetter, as sous-chef, co-created the dishes.

These days she prepares homey soups and quiches and serves up breakfast and lunch (and soon dinner will be included) in her unpretentious, cheery new space. The menu boasts homemade waffles, sandwiches, and salads–and almost everything costs less than $6.75.

“It’s so casual here–it’s like night and day from Babette’s,” she muses. “For me diversity is what’s really fun. I loved cooking at Babette’s, but I also like cooking other things, too, things more soul food­oriented or more rustic in their nature.

“This place gives me the opportunity to do that.”

The bistro, tucked behind Petaluma Boulevard North, has a comfortable blend of mottled ochre and cobalt-blue walls, faux-leopard banquettes, oversized plants, and mirrors. Soothing jazz vocals and French torch songs ooze from the sound system. An old heavy golden curtain from Babette’s is draped casually over a drinks cooler. Outdoor dining on the small patio by the river completes the laid-back picture.

Despite the difference between the two restaurants, the commitment to serious, well-thought-out food prepared with local ingredients remains the same.

“I like to offer people something a little more challenging in the food department than they’re used to, but in a really comfortable environment, so that people can get a little more adventurous,” explains Rastetter.

Check out her pickled black-eyed peas, warm turkey and ham muffaletto, crab chowder, or chicken hazelnut terrine and you’ll see that Rastetter’s downhome comfort food has a certain global sophistication. This is the place to go if you fancy a glass of rosé with your classic BLT.

A GRADUATE of the City College Hotel and Restaurant program in San Francisco, Rastetter has had an 18-year cooking career, including San Francisco stints at the prestigious Campton Place with Bradley Ogden and at Regina’s with Regina Charboneau. When Charboneau opened a second Regina’s in the Sonoma Hotel several years ago, Rastetter followed. That’s where she met future Babette’s owners Daniel Patterson and Elizabeth Ramsey.

Rastetter began cooking at Babette’s on the day the restaurant opened in 1994. She stayed there until the eatery closed last June. She veered from her kitchen duties only in the final eight months to manage Babette’s more casual wine bar cafe, in order to spend more time with her two small children.

During Babette’s rule, the food world heaped accolades on Chef Patterson while Rastetter toiled in obscurity. In 1996, Food and Wine Magazine named Patterson one of “the 12 best new chefs in America.”

Meanwhile, Rastetter worked quietly, creating half of all the courses served in the brocade-and-velvet dining room each week–a huge accomplishment with little recognition. But Rastetter insists she was content to stay in the background.

“Babette’s was always billed as this husband-and-wife team, with Elizabeth in the front and Daniel in the back, so maybe it just made more sense to keep it that way,” Rastetter explains.

“But just knowing that I did a lot of the cooking and that people were liking it was satisfaction enough.”

These days, as chef and restaurant owner, Rastetter is able to blend her culinary expertise and considerable people skills, urging her guests (read: patrons) to share food and conversation. “I love to encourage people to be a little more communal with their eating,” she says.

“You can try more, experience more, and you’re not committed to the same flavors for the entire meal.”

In June, Water Street Bistro will open for dinner with table service (right now orders are taken at the counter). Rastetter promises light fare that will allow people to “graze” their way through dinner.

“I envision items like a grilled fish with a vegetable ragoût in a little broth and green olive oil, or a warm entrée salad like duck confit with frisée, or roasted fingerlings and roasted onions,” she adds.

“I also see tapas here at night, some sangría–maybe we’ll bring in a flamenco guitarist.”

But what Rastetter visualizes most is the birth of a new community gathering place, with this small bistro’s slight echoes of a stripped-down Babette’s and its welcoming ambiance. “It’s not just dinner, it’s a chance to reach out and interact with other people besides just the people you go to dinner with,” Rastetter explains with a smile.

“It’s interesting, because by some gift of God or whoever, this space seems to make people do that.”

Water Street Bistro (which actually faces Water Street) is located at 100 Petaluma Blvd. N., Suite 106 (at Western Avenue), Petaluma. Open Monday to Friday, 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Saturday,7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m.; and Sunday, 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. In June, the restaurant will open for dinner Friday and Saturday, from 5 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. 763-9563.

From the May 4-10, 2000 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Lap of Luxury

Gourmet Groceries–Satisfying Our Urge to Splurge

By Marina Wolf

PEOPLE who hate grocery shopping should live in my head for a week. They’d soon realize that food can be window-shopped as much as cars or jewelry. Even in the most ordinary supermarket, I can find some obscure jar of goods on the top shelf to pick up and examine (the smaller and quirkier the jar, the better). Every few months I visit a local deli to stare through a yellowing fiberglass case at an ancient bottle of balsamic vinegar. On my first trip to New York, I visited the original Dean and DeLuca store in Manhattan–the ultimate upscale market/deli–like a pilgrim to a shrine. My camera lay forgotten against my breathless chest the whole time. My money lasted through six chocolate truffles and a bag of French sea salt, which could have been purchased through the web site or at a Dean and DeLuca store in St. Helena that’s about 3,000 miles closer to home. But, no. I wanted to stand physically in the presence of this food, this greatness.

One doesn’t analyze a religious experience, not in the heat of it. But as I left the store, I couldn’t help noticing the other tourists clutching Dean and DeLuca bags, relics of our devotion. In the days that followed, I wondered about the attraction that drew us through the myriad lures of the Big Apple, to pay $28 for six truffles and the privilege of wandering around this high-priced market for a couple of hours.

What is it, I wondered, that makes expensive food that interesting?

What are we paying for?

Well, status, for starters. Cultural or financial, take your pick. Even this humble writer gets an occasional thrill out of having some little spice or tidbit that my foodie friends haven’t heard of. People do this to show off money, too. There are those who simply like to put on a show. One luxury-food writer speaks of caviar thusly: “The most elegant and generous way [emphasis added] to serve caviar is on small, perfectly trimmed pieces of properly toasted bread. The dollop of caviar should never be skimpy.”

Don’t scrimp, in other words. Load it on.

Such generosity implies that cost is no object–this stuff does, after all, retail for $125 per two-ounce jar. But if you have to show that cost is no object, that reveals that cost is, in fact, the object.

In expensive foods, too, there is usually some suggestion of travel, of exploration of faraway corners of the earth. Once, high-priced luxury foods more accurately reflected the realities of long-distance shipping, whether by train, ship, or camel. With FedEx, the Internet, and phone ordering, distance doesn’t cost nearly as much as it used to. But a high price is still a precious reminder of how far this food traveled to land on our plates.

For others, the distance is not as important as the starting point. There is a price for homesickness, and people craving the foods of home are usually willing to pay through the nose. I once paid the equivalent of two weeks’ salary for a bag of marshmallows in Russia. I didn’t miss them until I saw the package, and then longing overwhelmed all common sense (we made s’mores over the stovetop).

WE PAY, TOO, for a more collective nostalgia, for a taste of making or harvesting or foraging, for a lifestyle that we as a society may have only the faintest, secondhand memory of. Sometimes we have endangered the food supply ourselves, as in the case of lobsters, which once were disdained along the East Coast for being so common. Sometimes the urban, modern way of life is the culprit. We are several generations removed from knowing how to make food items, like bread, jam, or sweet butter, that now command high prices for their creators.

Mushrooms are like this, too.

So many ethnic groups have mushroom-hunting traditions, and finding mushrooms doesn’t take any extreme skill, just some guidance and time. But wild mushrooms on the market are some of the most expensive items in the produce section ($35-$50 for fresh porcini). Don’t even think of asking the produce person for a sample.

Time, yes, that is also part of the high price of luxury food. Our time is so valuable, but look at what we pay for other people’s. We are paying for a taste of their time, because a lot of expensive food has simply been around for a while. A country ham in the Southern United States can hang around in a woodshed for 10 or 11 months (prices run from $50 on up, and you have to pick it up yourself).

The really good English cheddar and Italian Reggiano-Parmigiano cheeses might sit on a shelf for two years or more, and then they sell for at least $25 per pound.

The funny thing about luxury food is that somewhere, most likely at its point of origin, it is really cheap. In the South, that country ham, which has been lauded in gourmet magazines as America’s prosciutto, gets fried up for breakfast with red-eye gravy at home.

Saffron retails for $5 to $10 per gram, making it the most expensive food item in the world, ounce for ounce. Where it is grown in Morocco, the locals stuff their teapots with it to flavor their tea.

I try not to think about this truism too much. It only makes me envious of the people who live in caviar country. But that’s what luxury food is all about: wanting to be somewhere else, if only to eat.

From the May 4-10, 2000 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.