food: coq au vin with juniper, meatloaf with star anise
One of the reasons I love Top Chef so much is that aspect of “a twist”. So common the challenge is to do something like traditional family favorites, comfort food, but with “a twist”. Maybe it needs to be modernized, maybe it has to incorporate the chef’s signature style, maybe it needs to be low calorie, but there is always an interesting element that makes it something beyond the literal interpretation of the dish.
There is something special in that combination of tradition and mystery. Gordon Ramsay knows it. His whole philosophy has always been about doing away with pretentious dishes, fancy for fancy sake, and finding the heart of traditional cuisine. His recommendations on Kitchen Nightmares always boils down to returning to simpler food, but not simple as in boring, there always has to be something that makes it unique.
So I had fun this week creating various comfort foods with “a twist” based on some particularly delicious looking recipes from Food & Wine magazine. Coincidentally, I visited Town Tavern in Royal Oak this week, which is supposedly known for their comfort food, specifically a lobster mac and cheese. In the end, I was a lot more pleased with my own creations than the Town Tavern mac and cheese. Maybe I just had some really good successes, or maybe I just don’t think a dish can be called mac and cheese unless you can actually taste some major cheese. Whether it be cheddar or swiss or gruyere or parmesan, that doesn’t matter, but I just don’t buy little tubes in a cream sauce as “mac and cheese”.
Coq Au Vin with Juniper
Coq au vin is good French comfort food. Tom and I experienced a lot of rustic cuisine on our trip to France, delicious meats with full flavored sauces. I became especially interested in doing an updated version when I found an article in Food & Wine that listed 4 different takes on the traditional meal, each uniquely delicious. One was made with a Sauvignon Blanc and capers, another with Chardonnay and artichokes, and yet another Cotes du Rhone and carrots. The one I chose was the most unique… a sauce made from figs, juniper berries, cipollini onions, and Riesling.
Juniper berries are a strange substance in and of themselves, something I’ve be interested in playing with. It is the ingredient that gives the distinguising pine flavor to gin, and to see it being used in a coq au vin dish was certainly that “twist” I was looking for. The chicken came out perfectly cooked and juicy, and the sauce ingredients combine to create a rich, flavorful and sweet gravy that really felt like home-cooking. The juniper was not pungent, but was just enough to give you this holiday-esque feeling. Roast chicken, sweet figs, and pine trees… definitely a dish I’ll be trying again in the Christmas season.
Smoky Meatloaf with Star Anise
Second attempt at some comfort food was the very American meatloaf and ketchup. My mom had gotten me some star anise pods for Christmas, and here I found a recipe that not only used them in the meatloaf itself but in the accompanying prune ketchup. Alone the meatloaf turned out good, not great… I’m always afraid to pump up the spices beyond the recipe and there wasn’t really any way for me to taste it before cooking. Going to France did not make me comfortable with raw ground beef consumption. Anyway, the meatloaf was good and I appreciated the strong smoky flavor that came from using bacon and some smoked salt I had picked up in Paris. But even better than the meatloaf alone was the way it tasted with the prune ketchup, a fantastic blend of sticky sweetness and tangy with that lovely liquorice bite.
Two great recipes I shall be making again. To anyone listening out there, feel free to post some of your favorite comfort foods with a twist. I’d love to get some more ideas.
idea: good design makes for good usability
I found myself getting into an interesting discussion the other day, after posting my plea to make CellarTracker “prettier”:
“The first thing a good interface designer learns is how to use design clues to help guide the user experience. Design can help tell a user what a site is, what’s important, where to go next. It isn’t just pretty for pretty sake.”
I thought it was worth reiterating in another blog posting, because I feel like we’ve come a long way in the world of web design in the past few years. With the launch of Web 2.0 came a need for new sorts of experts in the field. It is no longer purely information architects, designers, and engineers. There are information designers, experience designers, and interaction designers. There are experiential marketers, design thinkers, and experience strategists. As new technologies (AJAX, Flash) make the experience, on one hand, seemingly more holistic to users, but on the other hand, incredibly more complex to build, every person is having to become smarter about how design informs the user experience. And no matter what grumpy purists like Jakob Nielsen say, this has caused major improvement to the overall web experience.
How Web 2.0 Has Improved Design
1. A rich interface allows for a more natural web interaction
Drag and drop utilizes what cognitive psychologists would call an “affordance”, or a clue that communicates to users how to use an object. It’s natural. From the minute the users sees their cursor turn into an open hand, to when their mouse down causes that hand to grip an object, it feels more connected to real world behavior than endless amounts of up and down arrows.
Many people are making a case for the physics of the iPhone as being a revolutionary step in incorporating more lifelike gestures into the browsing experience. With other technologies, such as Microsoft Surface, taking the hint and offering similar experiences, the future of physical gestures and computing is truly gaining forward momentum. Web 2.0 AJAX and Flash interaction is moving users in a more intuitive direction, getting them away from the past of “point and click” and pushing them towards the future of touch, pinch, and grab.
2. Design clues can communicate purpose
With Web 2.0 sites launching daily, each offering their new twist on a perceived audience need, the marketplace is and has been overrun and overloaded. The only way to gain traction against the competition is to position your site as a simple, yet powerful idea backed by an intuitive web experience. Design clues can help users understand the flavor of your site and how they are supposed to interact with it. It should give them simple direction and set them of running.
3. Good design structure can organize and prioritize content
Successful social content sites (Yelp!, Travelocity, Flickr, etc) offer a wealth of valuable content. However, for a user the content is only as good as how it can be used. This is where good design and information architecture really pay off. By bucketing similar content under easy to understand headers, a user can skim the page, allowing them to understand the content landscape “at a glance” and decide what is important. Futhermore, by using color and icons, design can visually prioritize calls to action and common tasks.
Improving CellarTracker’s User Experience
Since this whole train of thought began with my wish for CellarTracker to take some clues from all those pretty faces in the Wine 2.0 world, I thought I would have a bit of fun and see if I couldn’t put together a slightly improved user experience. My point was not to try and create a gorgeous mock-up that uses AJAX technology and tons of graphics. Not only would that be hard for CellarTracker to implement, but I recognize that really isn’t the desire or need of their audience base. So, with my amateur design skills, I tried my hand at a very minor facelift.
Before / After (click for larger image)
I envision CellarTracker as becoming my portal into the wine web, much like NetVibes is my personal start page for all things web. To do this, the home page for logged in users would need to be more customizable. There should be an ability to turn on and off content. What is important to a wine newbie still learning and exploring is going to be very different than the wine auction aficionado who needs to keep tight tabs on his cellar. The main page should not try and make compromises between these audiences, and instead enable them to craft an experience that is optimized for their needs.
Similarly, I think that sort of philosophy should be applied to sidebar navigation. Certain tasks are more important than others, more frequently used. Right now, all the links carry the same weight and there doesn’t seem to be a logical organization scheme (although there probably is). Visual clues such as icons and more pronounced separation of tasks will empower users to browse more efficiently and more confidently. And as Kathy Sierra can attest, the faster users can get confident about what they are doing, the sooner they can “kick ass” and become passionate about the experience.
food: butternut squash soup from Les Papilles in Paris
The French know how to do winter soup. Lots of cream and lots of butter. At Les Papilles in Paris, they took the fun of eating a hearty soup even further, and thus created one of the most memorable singular dishes of our whole Europe trip. They filled the bottom of a large bowl with roasted chestnuts, cheese, fresh chives, and a large wad of freshly whipped butter. The soup came family style in a big tureen for your to pour over the butter and tasty treasures. Mix together and magic happens.
Since it is nearing the end of winter, I thought this would be the perfect time for me to test out recreating the memorable dish. And I have to say that for the most part, it was a real success. The soup was a bit thicker, like a puree, and next time I will go for some high quality whipped butter. But all in all I found it a delicious and fun way to serve a soup with endless possibilities for alterations. This time I tried roasted apples, toasted chestnuts, and smoked cheddar, but next time maybe it can be poured over yogurt and Indian spices.
web sites: Cork’d vs. CellarTracker!
The record of my wine life for the past 2 and a half years has survived in various and progressively more modern forms… a hand-written journal, a scrapbook of labels, a large deck of alphabetized index cards, an Excel spreadsheet, and finally this blog. No source is an overall authority. In fact, most that live in one form, do not live in any other. Considering that I have built an entire web site around combining my love for “vinology” and “technology”, it was beyond time for me to take my wine lifestream and digitize it. And once I go digital, I never plan on going back.
Almost a year ago, I wrote a blog about what my dream wine web experience would be, in fact, a “web 3.0″ version of a wine site. But lately, my need has become so immediate that I’m willing to seek a more realistic solution while I wait for my dream one to arrive.
There are pieces of my dream out there… there are recommendation engines (Snooth), social networks (Cork’d), and robust organizational tools (CellarTracker), but each are failing to live up to their full potential. Cork’d was at one point a segment darling, but the platform hasn’t been updated in many months. In an effort to be very user friendly, the site is severely limited by it’s simplicity and user generated content. Snooth, in an effort to be more robust than Cork’d, suffers from a less than intuitive user experience. And CellarTracker? Well, it is just plain UGLY.
So… I decided the only way to really commit was to try them all.
Using Snooth, I only got about five entries in before giving up. Honestly, it was just a personal preference, and maybe I will end up trying it again. But, I wanted to give Cork’d priority because of its WineLibraryTV associations and use of the industry standard 100-point system. I built my Cork’d profile to over fifty wine reviews before throwing in the towel there. I was loving the AJAX form entry goodness and I was having fun tagging my wines with words like “zesty” and “musty”. But, as my list grew and grew, it became really unmanageable. No sorting ability? Really? What happens when I get up to my full 350 wine history?
The other big problem with Cork’d is that it all relies on user entered wine data. They are not connected to the big wine database in the sky, so they are completely dependent on user discretion and whim to fill in data accurately and remain consistent (although Cork’d offers them no “best practices” there). A wine entered by one user as “2005 McManis Petite Sirah” and another as “McManis 2005 Petite Sirah” are ultimately the same wine, but because of platform limitations, they will appear as though they were two separate wines.
Frustrated, I left the world of Cork’d, plugged my nose and began my adventure with CellarTracker, my last option left. Why does it have to be so very ugly? It looks like something ancient, something Web 0.5, with blue links, black text on white, and non-existent margins. But, to my pleasant surprise, the functionality was all that I needed and then some. A huger than huge wine database that allows me to easily review, rate, cellar, buy, and add to my “wish list”? Unlimited customizable wish lists? An easy to use mobile version? The ability to tie my blog entries to wines I’ve rated? Wow!!
You can really make the site what you want (well, except pretty). You can even save your favorite review sources and wine shops.
There are still some limits that seem easy enough to fix:
1. Make it a little more like my NetVibes. Allow me to feed in my own favorite wine RSS to populate expert reviews, wine articles, and industry news. Why should I have to manually add articles?
2. Give me the ability to do some limited skinning. If you aren’t going to make it pretty, at least let me!!
3. Take some learnings from Cork’d. Can I have a profile please, just to add a little flavor and make things a little more social? Oh, and you definitely need to hop onto the tagging bandwagon. Wines are not just regions, varietals, and 100-point ratings, they are flavors, smells, and experiences.
I can’t believe I’m saying it, but I think that stinky ol’ CellarTracker has the most opportunity to become the ultimate web wine tool. With the lack of updates and robust personalization on Cork’d, they wouldn’t even have to try that hard. It’s no longer about social for social sake, but the ability to personalize the tools and experience. If CellarTracker can just add a pretty face and some extensions, they could really be a force to be reckoned with.
wine: Peter Lehmann Clancy’s, 7 Deadly Zins 2005
movie: Antitrust
This month’s WBW (Wine Blog Wednesday) snuck up so quickly. I actually only found out about it on Monday, but the theme was so fun that I decided to go for it. This month it is all about “Comfort Wines”. The Wine Life Today blog challenges:
“Comfort Wines - choose a wine, any wine, that you love to unwind to and tell us about not only the wine but what makes the experience special and relaxing for you!”
This is exactly the type of evening I should be talked into more often!!
I asked my husband to go to the wine store and choose a couple of wines he thought represented the best of our evenings in together. I tried to guess what he’d bring home, and I almost hit the nail on the head. He walked in with three bottles: McManis Petite Sirah, Peter Lehmann Clancy’s, and 7 Deadly Zins. “7 Deadly Zins?” I asked, “I would have guessed Karly Buck Ten Point Zin.” He said they were out, but he thought the 7 Deadly might be more appropriate with the comfort theme… gluttony, sloth 
So what goes good with some deep dark drinkable New World wines? Mmmm… comfort food of quality steaks and homemade macaroni and cheese. But what else? What else absolutely defines a night of comfort between cynical newlyweds enjoying their pre-children freedom? Pajamas and non-stop bad movies from the minute we get home from work… specifically a practical cult classic bad movie, Dreamcatcher, and also two delightfully terrible movies featuring some of the most unrealistic computer-based plots, The Net and Antitrust.
3 great wines, 3 terrible movies… but only one night. One ratio is going win out over the other. Two wines, one movie was the end result.
Peter Lehmann Clancy’s 2005 What a great steak wine!! It smells of alcohol, crayons and subtle fruit. Tom smells paint thinner. The taste is of red liquorice and raspberry. It has a high acidity, yet it is still smooth and not overly dry. No dark fruit, not sour. It is quite balanced and lively.
7 Deadly Zins 2005 Smells of dried cherries and salt. Tom smells gouda, no smoked sausage, yet he says it smells like a Zin? I certainly get the Zin smell and taste I have only been able to describe as “pencil lead”, very industrial. He never knows what I’m talking about there. The smell also reminds us of our honeymoon, rich Napa wines. It tastes exactly how it smells, strong cherries and raspberries with high alcohol.
Antitrust was terrible and watchable, exactly what we could hope it could be. You have Ryan Phillipe in a particularly unfortunate role as an open-source programmer who is enticed to join Microsoft… oh I mean NURV (which sounds way dumber than Microsoft). Then, you have Tim Robbins in a obviously, yet equally over-the-top impersonation of an evil evil Bill Gates who gladly kills innocent programmers to steal their code to make his rich self even richer. Mwah-hah-hah, world domination by way of this amazing technology called “Synapse” in which anyone in the world can send messages, pictures, and audio to anyone else. Oh, you mean like e-mail, or text messages, or the internet (this was 2000 after all)? No, some proprietary revolutionary poopy software called “Synapse”.
A wonderful night. We are finishing the rest of our movies and wines tonight… Dreamcatcher is just as wonderfully bad as I remember, perhaps even better (worse?).
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