Simmer

Brian teaches a paella class at the winery occasionally to help take the fear out of preparing rice the Spanish way. It’s a great dish for parties because guests love watching paella come together, the flavors and fragrance building as ingredients are added. Brian cooks his paella by the traditional method, outdoors over a hardwood fire. Gauging the heat of the fire is the only challenge; if it is too hot, the rice will scorch. Be sure to let the coals burn down until they are well covered with white ash before starting. And if you still lack confidence after trying this recipe, sign up for the class. Paella tastes best warm, not hot, so allow for some cooling time.

When Jody Denton participated in the 2006 Workshop, he made delicate ricotta gnocchi in a sauce similar to the one outlined here. Chef Denton used wild boar sausage from Broken Arrow Ranch (see page 144), our longtime game supplier, but Italian pork sausage is a more readily available substitute. It takes practice to master gnocchi, but Chef Denton’s delicious sauce is just as appealing with rigatoni.

Narsai David, a San Francisco Bay Area radio personality and former restaurateur, joined us at the Workshop for many years as a sort of camp counselor. He would lead the chefs in their brainstorming sessions, and while the chefs worked feverishly on their courses, he would co-opt one quiet corner of the kitchen to make bread. Narsai surprised us every year with imaginative loaves that almost always incorporated whole grains, like the brown rice from California’s Lundberg Family Farms, or this three-seeded bread that he devised after sampling a similar bread in Australia.

It takes a little more attention to grill a pizza than to bake one, but the smoky touch of the grill is appealing—the next best thing to baking in a wood-fired oven. When Brian teaches pizza classes at the winery in summer, he demonstrates the grilling technique because so few people have a wood oven at home. The trick is to start the pizza crust in a hot zone to set it, and then flip it and move it to a cooler zone to add the topping and finish cooking. This topping is vegetarian, but you could add some crumbled sausage or pancetta, if you like.

On the first morning of the Workshop, participants rise early to pick grapes before the temperature soars. These chefs may labor in hot kitchens every day, but on grape-harvest day, they learn what real work is like. By midday, they are famished. We keep lunch casual, knowing that a big dinner will follow. Typically, we serve Mexican food, like these soft tacos, with from-scratch tortillas prepared outdoors on a comal (Mexican griddle) by winery staffers Brenda Godinez and Virginia Barrera. Rubaiyat, a blend of red varieties, is perfect for the occasion. Note that the beans need to soak overnight.

As Cakebread Cellars expanded sales overseas, we began inviting chefs from abroad to participate in the Workshop. Predictably, some new and intriguing scents soon emerged from our kitchen. This warmly spiced lentil soup is Brian’s invention, but he devised it after working with Indian chef Sujan Mukherjee at the 2008 Workshop and observing his spicing. Now Brian makes this wholesome soup with the Napa elementary school students that he teaches regularly, and he demonstrates the recipe at our employees’ wellness classes.

Chef Scott Neuman is a Latin cooking enthusiast who transformed the zucchini and corn in Dolores’s garden into a lively chile-spiked soup during the 2009 Workshop. This recipe is an adaptation that goes well with Cakebread Cellars Chardonnay. The soup is light and bright, a distillation of early summer flavors and a delightful first course in warm weather.

Hubert Keller, chef-owner of San Francisco’s Fleur de Lys, patterned this recipe after the traditional Provençal soupe doux (sweet garlic soup), a specialty of the peasant kitchen. But as you might expect from a chef for one of the city’s most elegant restaurants, Chef Keller has refined the procedure, blanching the garlic to temper some of its bite and adding saffron for a richer color. A poached egg set on a crouton in the center of the soup really dresses up the dish. Chef Keller participated in the 1991 Workshop.

Although you might think of cooked beans as red-wine food, when they’re tossed with shellfish, greens, and a lemony dressing, they pair better with Sauvignon Blanc. Brian created this recipe for a Workshop session on wine and food matching, to demonstrate how ingredients like citrus and arugula can steer a dish toward white wine. Note that you need to soak the beans overnight.

This modern, savory interpretation of panna cotta comes from Chef Debbie Gold, who participated in the 2000 Workshop. It has the silky, quivery texture of a traditional dessert panna cotta, with an appetizing butterscotch color. For an autumn first course, serve the custard with crisp toasts and a tart salad for contrast. Note that the panna cotta must be chilled for at least four hours before serving.

Crab cake fans will enjoy chef Marc Ehrler’s golden shrimp cakes, a dish that reflects his years cooking in the Caribbean. Chef Ehrler, a 1991 Workshop participant, substitutes rock shrimp for crab, grated yuca for bread crumbs, and cilantro for parsley to make an appetizer that tastes like something you might find at a seafood shack on Martinique. A mango salad seasoned with chile and lime is the palate-tingling accompaniment. Look for yuca, the starchy root vegetable also known as cassava, in markets that cater to a Latin American or Caribbean clientele.

Over the years, workshop chefs have devised many memorable hors d’oeuvres with chèvre because of Cakebread’s long friendship with two wine-country goat cheese producers: Laura Chenel and Skyhill. This one-bite appetizer, featuring soft herbed goat cheese spread on a potato slice with a dollop of tapenade, comes from chef Pascal Olhats, who prepared it during the 1993 Workshop. If you have a small food processor, you can halve the tapenade recipe, as you need only a small amount for this dish. Then again, tapenade keeps well in the refrigerator, and you will be happy to have some on hand. Use it as a sandwich condiment or spread for crostini, slather it on grilled tuna, or toss it with pasta.

Chef Walter Pisano, a 1999 Workshop alumnus, makes an aromatic pesto that includes neither basil nor garlic. He makes it with fresh spring herbs—parsley, chives, and mint—in place of the basil that doesn’t mature until summer. It’s lively and light, just the right complement to his feather-light gnocchi, but you could use this pesto on fresh pasta or fish as well. Chef Pisano’s gnocchi melt on the tongue when made with high-quality ricotta. At the winery, we use Bellwether Farms ricotta (see page 77), but Calabro also makes an excellent product. You may need to visit a specialty cheese shop to find fresh ricotta. Supermarket ricotta containing gums or stabilizers will not produce the most delicate gnocchi.

With real vanilla bean and honey, homemade caramel sauce will have a much more expressive flavor than anything store bought. This recipe is a great use for leftover caramel—if you have any scraps after cutting Chewy Caramel Candies or if you make more than you need (see Fashion Emergency below). Drizzling the sauce over ice cream is the obvious use, but the sauce can also add an extra element of flavor when served as a topping on cupcakes or a cake.

This old-fashioned dessert—also known as a slump or grunt—is made by simmering fruit and sugar with dumplings, which soak up the sweet syrup as they cook. Be careful not to overmix the dough; it should be slightly lumpy, not smooth.

This four-ingredient cake deserves a spot on every home baker’s list of go-to dessert recipes. It’s a cinch to prepare, and the cake itself is a revelation—the edges and top develop a delicately crisp crust, while the center remains moist and fudgy.