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Nancy’s Eat and Tweet

I’m headed out to do a restaurant review. Care to join me on Twitter. DSideDish.

Guessing Games With Andrew Chalk: WTF is This?

I love guessing games. Especially here on SideDish. It’s a great distraction from work and it drives my page views through the lower atmosphere. I was so happy when I opened an e-mail from SD reporter, Andrew Chalk. In it was a guessing game. So, here goes!

This is a picture of:
a)    A new building in the Arts District
b)    A modern sculpture
c)    A new $64 chocolate truffle from Noka
d)    Something caramelized
e)    All of the above
f)    None of the above
g)    Whatever I want it to be

Go for it. I’ll post another clue a little later in the day.

UPDATE: 3:09 p.m. Clue number 2.

UPDATE: DGirl takes the prize. Oh, we didn’t offer one! Whoopsie. Here’s Andrew:

It is indeed a cheese. Gjetost from Norway, also known as Brunost, is a semi-hard cheese made from cow and goat’s milk to which caramelization during boiling of the milk contributes an unforgettable brown color. The caramel is also evident in the taste which is nutty and creamy. It is usually cut with a cheese slicer in order to create thin strips as the taste is quite intense and the finish long-lived. I bought it for $15.90/lb at The Wooden Spoon in Plano. A store for all things Scandinavian except, on my last visit, the famous fetid shark. I settled for herring.

Wine Dinner Wednesday

This week’s wine dinners include offerings from Bailey’s Prime Plus, Cafe on the Green, Ferrari’s Flight, Adelmo’s, Nana, two from Stephan Pyles, and Pappas Bros Steakhouse.

October 30
Bailey’s Prime Plus at Park Lane. Four-Course Wine Dinner featuring the wines of B.R. Cohn. Executive Chef Israel Voirin and Sommelier Jeff Ivy present an exciting wine pairing dinner. Full menu and pairings below.

Sunday, November 1
Cafe on the Green. Halloween Sunday Brunch. Let the kiddos dress in costume for one more day, and enjoy a great holiday brunch at Cafe on the Green!  You’ll have a spooky good time!  Kids under 12 that come dressed in costume dine for free! Menu and details below.

Monday, November 2
Ferrari’s Flight Neighborhood Oven. California Dreaming on November 2 at Ferrari’s Flight Neighborhood Oven at 7:00 PM. Chef Stefano Secchi will showcase a tasting that will feature 8 California wines with Thanksgiving side dishes. The cost is a mere $15.00 (per person) and will include cooking instruction from Chef Stefano on side dishes. Menu and details below.

Friday, November 6
Adelmo’s. Aldelmo’s is having a Wine dinner on Friday, Nov. 6 at 6:30. It features 5 wines and 5 courses for $50.00, plus tax and gratuity. Take a look at the menu.

Friday, November 6
Nana. Friday Night Flight. The first Friday of every month, Nana at Hilton Anatole hosts a wine and food flight trio for only $20 (excluding tax and gratuity), a gourmet tasting of haute cuisine paired with choice wines.  For the month of November, the restaurant will highlight Cabernet Sauvignon, the premier red wine grape around the world, from Stephen Vincent, Obsidian Ridge and Cannonball wineries.  November’s Friday Night Flight is on November 6 between 6pm – 8pm.  Reservations are highly recommended by calling 214.761.7470. Menu and details below.

November 8th
Stephan Pyles. A Decade Of Dining. 10th Anniversary Of Stephan Pyles Celebrity Chef Dinner
Stunning Dinner and Auction Funds $15,000 Stephan Pyles Culinary Scholarship. Five celebrity chefs from throughout the state including Chef Pyles will present a spectacular five-course wine dinner along with a live auction to fund one of the nation’s largest culinary scholarships.  Five-course menu, chef line-up, and details below.

November 9th
Stephan Pyles. Stephan Pyles will host a special five-course dinner paired with Truchard wines in the restaurant’s private dining room on Monday, November 9.  Truchard Vinyards is a small, family-owned winery that has been producing exceptional wines in the Carneros region of Napa Valley for over 30 years.  Tony and Jo Ann Truchard will join Chef Pyles to educate diners on the wine and food pairings.

November 13
Pappas Bros. Steakhouse. Bubbles bring in the holidays! Our last tasting of the year celebrates all things sparkling, so join us as we get ready for the 2009 holiday season. This “sparkling” tasting, on November 13th, $45 per person plus tax and gratuity, begins at 6:00 p.m. Reservations are required. Call 214.366.2000 or visit pappasbrosdallas.com. Jump for more info. (more…)

FDA To Ban Sale Of Raw Oysters From Gulf Of Mexico

Well, here comes another topic of conversation—the FDA will ban the sale of raw oysters harvested in the Gulf of Mexico during the summer months starting in 2011. Under the new guidelines, oysters pulled from the Gulf after the summer of 2011 will have to be “pasteurized” (heated with mild heat to kill bacteria) before they are sold (Gold Band Oysters). Louisiana is way ahead of Texas on this front.

Hmm. About 15 people a year die from eating raw oysters infected with Vibrio vulnificus and most of those people had existing conditions such as AIDS, hepatitis, cancer, cirrhosis, diabetes, or kidney disease. It sounds like an easy solution—stay away from summertime oysters if you have any of these conditions, but many people are infected with these life-threatening illnesses and don’t know it until they come in contact with a bad oyster.

In 2003, two people died from eating raw oysters at Rockfish in Dallas. Photographer Nan Coulter and I traveled to the Texas coast and poked around oyster processing plants and talked to fishermen. You can read the whole story here. We talked to people in the seafood industry on both sides of the “pasteurization” argument. The only fact they agreed upon was that anti-bacterial procedures are expensive. No doubt, the Texas seafood industry, which supplies about two-thirds of the oysters to the U. S. market, will feel wronged.

Processing plant near Texas City. (Nan Coulter)

Buried at the bottom of this Associated Press report:

Anita Grove, executive director of the Apalachicola Bay Chamber of Commerce in Florida, said a ban would be crushing. She said oyster harvesters, shuckers, truckers and dealers are “the backbone to our economy. It’s always been that way.”

Yes Anita, it has been that way for a long time. But I’d like to see the identification documents of most of the harvesters, shuckers, and dealers I met in Texas. Most of them were Vietnamese, couldn’t speak English, and they ran from our cameras. I’d also like to see more enforcement of the regulations designed to control where those harvesters are allowed to pull their catch—so many break the rules and fish in closed polluted waters and haul them back to shore on unrefrigerated boats.