Beer Cookery

Try some suds in your favorite recipe

By Joe George

MY INTRODUCTION TO beer cookery was somewhat unconventional–it came while I was camping. While sautéing steaks in a cast-iron skillet over an open fire and wanting to deglaze the pan, I used the only liquid I had at the time … the beer I was drinking. The outcome was delicious. After my achievement, friends and I tried the same method again, only substituting vodka–the high alcohol content and open flame almost blew us up. I decided then that cooking with beer was a lot more fun–and safer–than cooking with vodka.

Beer as a beverage can be so satisfying and flavorful that it is often overlooked as a cooking liquid and baking ingredient. While wine is most often thought of as the optimum fermented cooking liquid, beer, too, has its place.

And like wine, beer has been used in this manner since the beginning of civilization.

Interestingly, beer and bread–both of which are based on natural fermentation–originated simultaneously in the Southern Levant more than 10,000 years ago. As with bread, the first beer, however crude, was most probably an accident. Leavened bread originated when a primitive dough or gruel was left to stand for too long and natural yeast cells found their way into the mix. And some culinary historians claim the same happened with beer, that it was most likely a bowl of barley and water that began to ferment or some excess liquid containing yeast ran off a dough.

Thus it’s no coincidence that in ancient civilizations bread and beer were usually made in the same area; in Ancient Egypt slaves were paid a salary of salt, bread, beer, and garlic. (I wonder if they received a holiday bonus.)

With this knowledge it surprises me that beer is not thought of as a food as well as a drink. The famed Parisian boulanger, Lionel Poilâne, whose bakeshop uses a sourdough starter that has been in his family for three generations, often refers to his bread as “solid beer.” Now there’s a subject to silently contemplate.

There is one gentleman in particular that I know who abides by the claim that beer is a form of food, and that one can actually be sustained on the fermented liquid alone. He did prove this fact, consciously or unconsciously, for a while. Though he did become somewhat pallid in complexion, he also survived the rigorous treatment of ingesting only beer. He has since been consuming a more normal diet, so I am told.

As with any cooking liquid that contains alcohol, cooking with beer takes some thought and experience. Beer naturally has a slightly bitter flavor–it comes from the hops–and if too much is used in any recipe it could easily overpower the entire dish. Food cooked properly with beer will contain only mild nuances of the beverage. If too much beer is added or it becomes too concentrated, the result will carry an unpleasant bitter flavor. Thus said, beer makes a perfect braising liquid for beef or pork, where the strong flavors of the meat mingle with, and can stand up to, those of the of beer.

The area of cooking where beer is truly suited is baking; the natural yeast flavor in the liquid pairs well with baked goods. And while it may sound odd to incorporate beer into a recipe such as chocolate cake, the sweetness of the sugar and slight bitterness in the chocolate marry well with the flavor of beer.

To assimilate beer into some of your favorite recipes begin by replacing just a portion of the liquid in the recipe with beer, lest you end up with a bitter concoction.

And remember to save some beer to sip while you relax and ponder what’s cooking.

Chocolate Beer Cake

3/4 cup plus 1 tbsp. unsalted butter 2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour 2 tsp. baking powder 1/2 tsp. baking soda 3/4 tsp. salt 4 oz. semi-sweet chocolate chips 4 eggs, separated 1 1/2 cups sugar

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grease cake pan lightly with 1 tbsp. butter and dust it with 1/4 cup flour. Tip pan in all directions to coat it with the flour, then tap out any excess.

In a medium bowl, combine the remaining 2-1/2 cups flour with baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Melt chocolate by stirring it in a small bowl over a simmering pot of water.

In bowl of an electric mixer, combine egg whites and 2 tbsp. sugar and whip on high until stiff peaks form. In a separate bowl of electric mixer, combine remaining 3/4 cup butter with remaining sugar and beat on high speed until thoroughly creamed and light in texture. Add egg yolks and whip for another couple of minutes, or until light and airy. Lower speed and add melted chocolate. Mix until combined. Continue mixing while gradually adding flour mixture to creamed butter and sugar. Mix until thoroughly combined.

Remove bowl from mixer and, using a rubber spatula, carefully fold egg whites into batter until just combined. Gently pour batter into the prepared cake pan and smooth the surface with a spatula.

Bake cake in middle rack of oven for approximately 40 minutes, or until a wooden skewer inserted into the center of cake pulls out clean. Remove cake from oven and turn out onto a sugared board or counter. Allow to cool before eating or frosting. Makes one 12-inch cake.

Chocolate-Lager Sauce

1 cup lager 14 oz. semi-sweet chocolate chips

Place lager in a small saucepot over medium-high heat and bring to a simmer. Place chocolate chips in a small bowl and set aside. When beer simmers, pour it over chocolate. Stir chocolate sauce with a wooden spoon until chocolate is completely melted. Allow sauce to cool to room temperature before using. This sauce is an ideal accompaniment when drizzled over chocolate beer cake and served with vanilla ice cream. Makes 2 3/4 cups.

From the April 22-28, 1999 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Great Plates

Reaching for inspiration: Richard Strattman of Chalk Hill Winery often wanders the oak-studded hills of Healdsburg when working up new menus.

How chefs create–Helpful hints on inventing new dishes

By Marina Wolf

WHEN CHEF Richard Strattman works up menus for the Chalk Hill Winery, he’s usually out biking or wandering the oak-studded hills northeast of Healdsburg looking for wild mushrooms or spring nettles: anywhere, in other words, but the dining rooms where his creations are served up. Today, though, he’s agreed to sit still and do it, to break down the process for a visitor who hopes to learn something, anything, to make her cooking at home more creative.

In the quiet sunlit room at the winery, the session starts out encouragingly enough. Strattman pulls out a blank menu template for a lunch that will be served to a small visiting trade group to show off the newly released 1997 wines. Strattman has also brought up printouts from his recipe database, sorted by season and wine affinities, and a great flapping foldout listing ingredients from past springs: green garlic, asparagus, lamb.

The manifesto, or “cheat sheet,” is clearly used. “I need a lot of cheating,” he says. “If I need a real light seafood dish for sauvignon blanc, I can think of maybe six off the top of my head. But with the databases and manifestoes I can come up with dozens.”

Great. Make a photocopy, buy a recipe database. That’s easy enough. But when Strattman begins jotting down dishes and techniques, and amending, things speed up. He explains why most of what he puts down isn’t difficult: a light seafood salad based on whatever he finds on the market that day, tamales filled with rabbit, which was braised in quantity for another group of visitors two days beforehand. Deliberate leftovers, in other words, a tactic many families are familiar with. But where the home cook might have sweated over cookbooks for hours, Strattman has plucked out his elegant little lunch in less than 15 minutes; it probably would have taken him five if he weren’t explaining as he writes.

The sheer volume of his repertory, whether in his head or on a cheat sheet, accounts in large part for Strattman’s speed, and it’s one key difference between the professional and home cook. But often what’s called culinary creativity is in fact a highly trained attention to external factors–product availability and quality, the diners’ tastes, the purpose and tone of the event–and a flexibility in incorporating them into the meal.

Cal Uchida, executive chef for the Sonoma Moment grape-growing and olive oil estate, is renowned for his innovative responses to the challenge. And even a more casual occasion, such as a recent dinner at his pastor’s home, gets the same basic approach. “The people are more casual, I’m meeting his family; I don’t know their likes and dislikes,” relates Uchida, who eventually decided on a simple grill menu and a group-effort dessert.

But winery chefs such as Strattman must deal with an even larger set of constraints, says Mary Evely, the executive chef at the Simi Winery and author of The Vintner’s Table. For wine chefs, everything revolves around wine. In a restaurant, Evely decides what wine she wants to drink and then finds a dish to go with it. “Wine is a fixed item,” she explains firmly. “You can’t ask the winemaker to run up and put together a nice little wine to go with the dish that’s on the table. But you can change things in the food preparation.”

Fortunately, making those changes in the food preparation and adapting dishes and menus is something that can be learned. “Most people have a much better [cooking] talent than they’re aware of, and they just don’t pay attention,” Evely says. “You have to put some thought into it if you want to be able to go a little crazy in the kitchen. You have to at least think about, you know, categories of food. … If you’ve never tasted basil and you’ve never tasted cilantro, you won’t have a clue as to what will happen if you substitute cilantro for basil. So it does require paying attention when you’re tasting things and remembering what they taste like.”

Strattman advises home cooks to take the time and think about what they are doing. “Sautéing, roasting, braising–these techniques are in any book, so get a handle on the basics,” he says, flipping through his books. “It’s like music. Learning one recipe at a time is like learning one song at a time. But if you understand some chromatic scales, then you can read any music.”

THE ASPIRING artiste also needs a muse, which, like beauty, can be found in anything. Evely frequents farmers’ markets all over the county to see what the season and weather bring. Books and magazines are another way to get inspired. Rather than whipping up a recipe exactly according to spec–from, say, the March issue of Food and Wine–many chefs use the text and pictures to spark new creations or tangents from the original idea, or to dig up support for their concepts. Uchida heads straight for the books when he’s planning a new menu for an event.

“I love to look at pictures, cookbooks, recipes,” he says excitedly. “Things will just start popping up off the pages.”

Michael Quigley of Cafe Lolo reads books and magazines, too. But like all chefs, Quigley is perpetually on the run, so more often than not the ideas and images and flavors go into his head and, well, stew for a while. “I have all of these ideas orbiting around in my head all of the time, and I just grab one down once in a while,” says Quigley. “Like I have this one that’s been orbiting around in my head for seven years, and I’m finally going to do something with it on our next menu.”

Quigley might take his creation into the kitchen and test a little bit if he gets a chance. But mainly he works off the cuff. “To be honest, I’ve had dishes that I haven’t even made until we start the new menu. And nine times out of 10, that works the best.”

Bea Beasley of Beasley Catering and Event Management agrees: “Many things I’ve never made before in my life, but I can feel it. I can taste in my head, or I can see something, or maybe I’ve tasted it in a restaurant, and I can re-create it.” She says it’s a gift, which is a depressing thought for those cooks who yearn for a little of that spark in their own kitchen.

Is there any way to warm oneself on the fire of culinary creativity, without having to go to cooking school? Short answer: yes. Long answer: yes. And here’s how:

Set aside the measuring spoons. “You have to slavishly measure if you’re baking, because there’s chemistry involved,” says Evely. “But for dishes that you’re just throwing together, a pasta sauce or something like that, you don’t need to.” She recommends adding ingredients a little at a time and tasting. Instead of dumping in a half teaspoon of salt all at once, add just a pinch and see if you like it.

Be organized. It sounds like a contradiction in terms, but Beasley swears it’s the best way to have fun. Get all your ingredients laid out ahead of time, and clean up as you go along (“Put that in big print,” she says).

Get out of the house. You can stay inside and look at cooking magazines all day, but in a county such as ours, where the food and the environment are so closely intertwined, it’s a shame not to work with that ambiance in your own culinary endeavors. “Just go out on the front lawn and see what the day is telling you,” says Richard Strattman.

From the April 22-28, 1999 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Salad Barred

Oh, the joys of iceberg lettuce

By John Bridges

THE OTHER NIGHT, it dawned on me that finally, at age 48, I know what I want in life. I want a head of iceberg lettuce. I am a middle-aged man, and I have not seen a head of iceberg lettuce in years. Of course, I lie when I say that. Just days ago, I saw what had to be cratefuls of the stuff, head piled upon head, each one as big and solid as a green-marbleized bowling ball. Laid out and glistening in a lusterless sort of way, they were getting misted by a computer-timed produce mister.

They were there, right next to the cabbage and the turnips and the rutabagas–all the things that are bought by people who still own pressure cookers.

The bok choy and the daikon radishes and the arugula and the curly endive were on the other side of the store, halogen-lit and surrounded by mounds of sugar snap peas that were selling for something like $7.95 a pound. The iceberg was going for 25 cents a head. If you bought two heads, you got a free puppy to take home.

But this much I can say with certainty: I have not seen anybody actually buy a head of iceberg lettuce since sometime in 1977. The last time I was in a public place and a server actually offered me anything served on a leaf of iceberg lettuce, it was 1973. The best I remember, it was a public place where portions of macaroni and cheese were laid out under a sneeze guard; on the wall there was a B-minus rating from the health department.

The best I remember, the server was wearing a paper hat and pushing day-old Jell-O. She was also wearing rubber gloves.

Nevertheless, I do not believe that any head of iceberg lettuce deserves this sort of treatment just because it wants to be served with Thousand Island dressing. I have been through a lot of cafeteria lines in my time, and I have eaten a lot of cottage-cheese-and-ring-of-pineapple combination salads. I have consumed a lot of things that were served with a maraschino cherry on top. But I cannot think the single leaf of iceberg lettuce poking out from underneath ever did me any lasting harm.

I CAME TO full-grown manhood knowing nothing but iceberg lettuce. Although I existed in a world that did not know baby Bibb from Boston, a world in which anything that had a dressing on it could be called a salad course, I still managed to get through puberty, pass my driver’s license examination, and learn to read French.

I grew fat on a food pyramid that rested on a bed of iceberg lettuce, but I also got to see a lot of Doris Day movies. Looking back on my life, I do not remember a lot of arugula. At the same time, I do not remember feeling deprived.

Instead, I remember feeling the unwavering comfort that can come only from a world that sees no particular reason to offer menu options. It was nice to know that, no matter what diner counter I sat at, there would be only one soup du jour; it would be the same one it had been the day before; it would be tomato, out of a can. It was a relief to know that there would not be a special of the day, no fresh catch, no choice of gourmet pizzas.

There was no such thing as a salad bar. There were only brown plastic salad bowls that wanted to look like slightly under-fired pottery. The salad that was served in them was called “green.” It came with “tomato wedges, radish garnish, and cucumber slices (in season).”

Nobody knew about house dressing. Nobody knew about a caesar. Nobody knew about romaine. It was a world that did not ask me if I wanted freshly cracked pepper. I remember it as a very nice place.

It was, of course, a world in which refrigeration was not everything it was supposed to be. Once in a while, when you cracked open a head of iceberg lettuce, the leaves all had brown edges. Sometimes there was a mushy spot down in the middle, where the whole thing had gone spongy with field rot. Sometimes there was even a wormhole. Sometimes the dream of lettuce wedges, served alongside T-bones and sour-creamed and bacon-bitted baked potatoes, ended up as nothing more than a few salvaged, still-curling leaves that did the best they could to coddle gray, mayonnaisey lumps of tuna fish salad.

It was not, after all, as if this was a world that knew no adventure. It was not as though we were shielded from all disappointment. It was not as though we had nothing to fear.

I have nothing against arugula. Nor against mesclun. Nor against mixed field greens in a snappy vinaigrette. It is not as if I have anything against a bed of watercress and ruffled endive.

I have nothing against salads that mix up toasted pine nuts and whole cloves of garlic and lumps of $27.98-a-pound cheese from Tuscany. I have nothing against a few lumps of Gorgonzola, tossed lightly in balsamico and mixed up with shiitakes and edible nasturtiums. I have nothing against a handful of Kalamata olives thrown together with a few homemade croutons and soaked in a slow-simmered broth of fresh oregano and hand-seeded tomato pulp.

Sometimes, however, I would like something that fights back when I bite into it, something that screams for red French dressing in a bottle that reads “Shake thoroughly before pouring,” something that, even though it is lettuce, seems to scream “Hamburger, fries, and, yes, I’ll have extra cheese on that.”

The other night, while I was watching my friend Nadine arrange mandarin orange slices on a plate of three-quarter-inch-wide spinach leaves, I said, “Do you think you could do that kind of thing with a head of iceberg?”

Nadine put down her mandarin-orange tongs and said, “Why in hell would anybody want to do that?”

I said, “I don’t know. Just, sometimes, I get to thinking about iceberg.”

Nadine said, “That is thoroughly disgusting. It reminds me of my mother.”

I said, “Well, yeah, me too.”

Nadine said, “It has absolutely no nutritional value. I’m not even sure it’s fiber.”

I said, “For fiber, I can take Metamucil.”

Wiping her fingertips on a tea towel and adjusting the cardigan of her sweater set, Nadine said, “Personally, I’m glad we live in a world that is more enlightened, a world in which we do not have to fry things, a world in which we can eat raw fish.”

I said, “It’s just that, sometimes, I still want something that kinda goes crunch in my mouth.”

Nadine said, “Take these plates into the dining room. Put them on top of the chargers. Do not switch anybody’s place card.”

AT THE TABLE, where all the women, like Nadine, were wearing sweater sets, there was candlelight and Harry Connick Jr. was playing on the stereo. There was a brisk Pinot Grigio to go with the salad; crisp homemade rusks of poppy-seed wheat bread were served on the side.

I ate my tiny spinach leaves and tried to look happy, but I was not. I knew that, at any minute, I could discover that, because my tiny spinach leaves were so fresh from the green-grocer, I was swallowing grit. I might discover that I was allergic to something in the dressing. At that very dinner table, on that selfsame candlelit evening, my entire life might very well be changed.

If I had had a head of iceberg lettuce, I wouldn’t have been taking those risks.

From the April 22-28, 1999 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Something’s Cookin’

Salt & Pepper: 135 Perfectly Seasoned Recipes
By Michele Anna Jordan
(Broadway; $25)

THERE ARE LOTS of niche cookbooks dedicated to everything from tomatoes to tamales, but only a serious foodie would offer up a 238-page tome to those most staple of kitchen staples, salt and pepper. Michele Anna Jordan, a well-seasoned local food writer who has won a James Beard Award and spoken at the annual Pepper and Spice Seminar in Kuching (the capital of one of two Malaysian states on the island of Borneo), knows a thing or two about this ubiquitous culinary duo, having written on the topic first for the Independent and more recently in her role as a columnist with the local daily. Suffice to say, most of us take these spices for granted. But Jordan has a real flair for storytelling, whisking us from the salt mines of Kansas to the pepper farms of Sarikei while dishing up spicy recipes ranging from Asian salt eggs to pepper-spiced cookies.–Greg Cahill

Cooking without a Kitchen
By Peter Mazonson
(MCB Publications; $7.95)

THE SAME PUBLISHERS who brought us The Roadkill Cookbook are back with a cleaner, if still dubious, concept: coffeepot cookery. With Cooking without a Kitchen, author Peter Mazonson steps outside the boundaries of hotel-room edibles–candy bars from the vending machine or overpriced shoe leather from room service–and enters an infinitely more entertaining land of 20-cup steamed salmon and 10-cup soft-boiled eggs. Food in a filter usually takes longer to cook, and the lengthy disclaimer at the front of the book suggests that the road to becoming a coffeepot cookmaster is fraught with danger. But adventurous spirits who find themselves in a strange town with nothing but time and a spare box of mac ‘n’ cheese on their hands will find this a fun way of finagling dinner.–Marina Wolf

Simply Vegetarian
By Sue Spitler
(Surrey Books; $14.95)

PART OF A SERIES of similar books devoted to simple cooking, Simply Vegetarian is blessed with quick and, yes, simple, recipes for everyday entrées or party creations. And anyone who has wrestled with a three-hour vegetarian lasagna recipe from the overrated Green’s cookbook can appreciate that. Spitler has a way with–don’t mind if I say it again–simplicity: mouthwatering 20-minute ravioli, tantalizing one-dish dinners, and beans, beans, beans! (And let’s put in a plug for root vegetables–simply love ’em.) The beauty of these–you got it!–simple recipes is that they often are low-fat, healthy, and cheap. And you’ll have extra leisure time to plan your meals and marvel at all those complicated cooking shows on PBS. It’s as simple as that.–G.C.

Cooking at the Kasbah: Recipes from My Moroccan Kitchen
By Kitty Morse
(Chronicle Books; $22.95)

COOKING in the Kasbah is too pretty to use and too useful to languish on the coffee table. But once you’ve devoured the vibrant photos of the author’s beloved Morocco, you should definitely get the book in the kitchen and risk a few splatters of olive oil. Morocco’s climate is much like California’s–warm and coastal–which means many of the indigenous ingredients should ring a bell: tomatoes, olives, peppers, lemons. But evocative spice blends and sweet-salty notes open up wonderful variations on those traditional Mediterranean themes. Morse’s recipes range from simple (preserved lemons: cut open, stuff with salt, let ’em sit) to charmingly challenging (b’stilla, the logic-defying, cuisine-defining sweet chicken pie). Sit down with a cup of sweet mint tea (the Moroccan national drink) and take your pick.–M.W.

The Healthy Oven Baking Book
By Sarah Phillips
(Doubleday; $17.95)

WHAT THE WORLD needs now is … more desserts! Sarah Phillips understands this and delivers the goods–baked goods that is–made from scratch and with less fat. And for beginners, you get lots of easy-to-understand tips on strengtheners, sweeteners, and fat substitutres–a sort of Low-fat Cookin’ 101. As the creator of Healthy Oven low-fat baking mixes, Phillips for years has been enticing the public to fill up on all-natural, low-fat cake and muffins. Now gourmands just like you and me can cozy up to guilt-free sweet potato cream cheese pie, fudgy chocolate frosting (just 1 gram of saturated fat), and zesty orange-coconut bars. Warning: Sarah does cheat a little by listing her own baking mixes in a few recipes. Hey, she’s health conscious, but she’s no fool.–G.C.

The Millennium Cookbook: Extraordinary Vegetarian Cuisine
By Eric Tucker and John Westerdahl; dessert recipes by Sascha Weiss
(Ten Speed Press; $19.95)

THE HEALTHFUL fusion cooking offered by The Millennium Cookbook and its namesake, the elegantly vegan San Francisco eatery, may be the best thing to hit the vegetarian world since prepackaged tofu. Some of the recipes herein are distressingly lengthy, but that happens in almost any high-glam cookbook. Beginners should start with simpler fare: salads, soups, dips, and desserts, which tend to be simple but not stupid, and rich with the promise of excellent flavor. The directions are always clear, the ingredients are inspired, and the nutritional information prosaically placed at the end of each creation is especially heartening for those who want low-fat with their high-flavor foods. Definitely give The Millennium Cookbook a whirl before Earth’s odometer clicks over (and our Big Mac mines run out).–M.W.

From the April 22-28, 1999 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Tea Time

Reading the leaves: Maggie Roth, proprietor of the Tea Room Cafe in Petaluma, has created a welcome alternative to the local java scene.

A brief history of tea leads us strangely to Petaluma

By Gretchen Giles

ON A BALMY DAY in 2737 B.C., Chinese Emperor Shen Nung relaxed under a tree while his servant boiled drinking water. A leaf floated idly down into the steaming liquid, a fragrant scent wafted up, and a pleasant stain seeped throughout. A fearless herbalist, Shen Nung took a sip. With unknowing understatement, he declared it good.

No, wait.

It was year five of the seven sleepless years of contemplation on the Buddha. Bodhidharma, the founder of Zen Buddhism, was seated beneath a tree. With two alarming years yet to go, he began to feel drowsy. He reached up and plucked a smooth, green, camellialike leaf, intending to chew it for distraction. Not only was he pleasantly diverted, but the caffeine inherent in the leaf made two wide-eyed years fly by.

Or so they say.

Whatever the story, the topic is tea. Honored through ceremony, sipped for health, served high, low, and creamed, tea is also responsible for insurrection, unrest, one very wet party, and the explosion of the British shipping and porcelain industries. Many cultures seem to have been built on tea’s watery back, and from culture flows custom.

Replacing gin and whiskey as England’s favored drink, tea as a custom inadvertently aided the early rise of feminism by creating that den of suffragist plotting: the tearoom. A place where a woman could go by herself without male supervision, have a warm drink, a small cucumber sandwich, and perhaps just one slice of strawberry cake. Quietly. Alone. Or, even better–with friends, in a relaxed setting where just for that once she didn’t have to slice the damn cucumbers, bake the damn cake, or do the damn dishes herself.

Because someone very much like Maggie Roth would do it for her. Not that the soft-spoken Roth resembles anyone’s maiden aunt. Nor does she favor the simple black frock and stiff starched pinafore of early tearoom purveyors. As for the dishes, well, on one recent visit it was Roth’s husband, local artist David Best, who donned the rubber apron and bused cold teapots and the odd muffin crust from the tables of her simply named Tea Room Cafe.

But she did open the place.

“I grew up with tea every afternoon. It was something that my mom did with all of us, serve us tea with cinnamon toast–just something that simple after school,” says Roth, seated outside her popular 7-week-old Petaluma establishment. Drinking tea in Ireland is nice too, as Roth has discovered over years of visiting and owning a cottage there. Her parents spend half of each year in a home they purchased 37 years ago near Tipperary.

Opening the favored Bluestone Main, an upscale garden and gift store in Petaluma, 11 years ago, Roth–who sold the store in 1997–is no neophyte when it comes to serving the public. As with Bluestone Main, the Tea Room Cafe has the rural sophistication that is Roth’s signature. Her husband’s work adorns the walls, old Texaco signs have been re-upholstered with glass to spell TEA along the wainscoting, and air, light, and white are the keys.

In short, it’s the kitchen most of us don’t have.

YET Roth’s restaurant experience is limited to ordering a meal and asking for the check. “Basically, I wanted a tearoom, but I inherited a breakfast/ lunch place. It’s more than I expected or wanted, but it’s been fun,” she admits with a shrug.

Inheriting the chef doesn’t hurt, either.

Cathy Fox, who cooks and helps Roth devise the menus, figure the pricing, and portion the servings, has worked on and off at the Tea Room Cafe’s site for the past 18 years, through three different businesses, including Markey’s Cafe. “They just add $500 to the lease price for me,” she jokes merrily, serving an outdoor breakfast.

“I’m basically winging it,” Roth admits. “I haven’t come from any training. I love to cook, and I’ve done catering and everybody has helped me. I don’t know if there is any real science–well, I know there is, but I don’t know it.”

Other than science, what has been the biggest surprise of Roth’s new venture?

“The food,” she bursts out with a laugh. “In retail, you buy something for $1 and stick it on the shelf for $2. It looks good, you check it every once in a while, hopefully it sells. When you buy an onion–you have to chop it, you have to cook it, you have to wash the plates. There’s just this constant movement of work going on.”

Ah, yes. But as Bodhidharma himself might have remarked, it’s lovely to turn over a new leaf.

The Tea Room Cafe’s hours are 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. weekdays; 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Saturdays; 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sundays. 316 Western Ave., Petaluma. 765-0199.

From the April 15-21, 1999 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.