Linda’s Tips and Travel Notes

Food and Dining Radio Show – 1.3.08

Linda Gassenheimer (LG)
Joseph Cooper (JC)
Fred Tasker (FT)
Douglas Rodriguez (DR)

LG: Can you believe it has been 9 years since we started the radio program? I’m looking forward to next year and lots of good food, great wine and great company. Our guest today is Douglas Rodriguez, the chef owner of  OLA South Beach. He has been ahead of food trends in Florida for many years.

DR: It’s a pleasure to be here. Congratulations on your anniversary.

LG: Thank you. Chef, you’re the father of Nuevo Latino cooking. The original YUCA restaurant in Coral Gables was your first platform where you showed this new cooking. That’s when the Miami culinary scene was beginning to be noticed. Tell us, what’s in store for 2008?

DR: I think we’re seeing many organic, sustainable things on menus - anything to do with the word “green.” That’s a trend for the upcoming year.

LG: How does a restaurant become “green”?

DR: By being conscious of the environment. Things like recycling in the restaurants and buying sustainable fish. We put a water filtering system in the restaurant so we don’t have to sell bottled water.

LG: But bottled water is so profitable for restaurants?!

DR: I’m a business man! I’m not giving up profits. We use the same 100 bottles and fill them with our water from our filtering system.

LG: You’ve brought some wonderful food for our anniversary.

DR: Yes, I brought pistachio cake filled with blueberries and pastry cream. I’ve also brought you some pineapple mustard glazed ribs.

LG: These are so juicy and sweet. The flavor goes to the bone; it’s not just on the top.

DR: We put them in brine with salt, dry mustard and brown sugar. Then I smoke them – hot and cold smoke.

JC: How does cold smoking work?

DR: It’s a machine. Instead of turning on the heating element, I put it in with an ice bath under it. It’s like an oven. I can do cold smoke or turn on the oven and do hot smoke. These are baby backs with a lot of meat on them. They were smoked for 45 minutes.

LG: The cake is beautiful.

LG: What other trends will we be seeing this year? I’ve seen things in the past like stacking food. Is that gone?

DR: That was a trend like 20 years ago – the higher you go, the better chef you were. Now it seems like things are more streamlined and everything runs from left to right. It’s more clean.  Food is trending toward more casual dining. People would rather try more small plates in a casual way. We’re trending toward more plates with smaller portions.

JC: Is this the end of the entrée?

DR: I wouldn’t say it’s the end of the entrée, but you’re going to see more plates that are shareable.

LG: What else is going to be on menus that are different this year?

DR: Definitely organic foods.

LG: What about comfort foods?

DR: I think that has fazed out. Molecular/scientific cooking trends are gone, but the elements are going to stick. I don’t think every city is going to have a restaurant with molecular cooking.

JC: What is that?

DR: It’s like scientific cooking. They do a lot of foams and those little frozen balls. They use more chemicals in cooking. They bring scientific techniques into the kitchen. Some of the ideas are going to stick but a whole restaurant based on them doesn’t have a lot of longevity. People don’t want to be told how to eat or listen to a long explanation about how the food was made.

LG: I had a gin and tonic once and they poured liquid nitrogen into it which freezes the tonic which was poured over cucumbers soaked in gin. I ate my gin and tonic. That’s what we mean by molecular cooking.

FT: That sounds expensive.

DR: It’s not cheap.

LG: It’s fun and interesting though. I had a pumpkin soup recently with delicious foam on top.

DR: They put nitrous oxide into a container and that’s how they bring the foam to the table.

LG: Yes, they put flavored liquid in a canister like old fashioned whip cream. That’s how it comes.
When we talk about “beyond the Mango Gang,” what do you mean by that?

DR: The Mango Gang was a core of 4 chefs that got a lot of attention. They called it squirt bottle cuisine because they were saucing the plates with them. What we see now are those same ideas (like adding mango to a piece of fish) but in a different way. Like you see rosemary and thyme in a desert.

LG: So you’re adding sage to my sorbet?

DR: You’re going to see mixing of unusual ingredients, like chocolate mixed with other unusual ingredients like bacon or red pepper.

LG: Now you’re saying we’re not going to see fruit in our entrées?

DR: A lot less of it and it’s going to be in different ways. Now you’re seeing a lot less fruit and more with spices than with heat.

LG: What are the popular things in your restaurant OLA?

DR: Cervices is one of our main dishes. We have a cervices section. At the moment we have 9 different types. The most exotic is a sea urchin one.

Caller: We went to a restaurant and they combined bacon and pecan pie. It was outrageous – the sweet and salty together.

LG: Yes, Chinese food is like that.

DR: And that’s the basis of Thai cuisine.

Caller: I had an amazing experience at OLA. I have a question about small plates and plates to share. My question is, what flavors do you recommend for wine when sharing many different plates, and how do you get people accustomed to that kind of eating?

FT: I don’t think there’s any one wine.  My solution is to get one bottle of red and one bottle of white and two glasses each. The real purists start out with wine and then see what food goes with it.

[break]

LG: We’re talking with Douglas Rodriguez about food trends for 2008. We were just finishing a question about how you get people to accept the small plates on the menus.

DR: I think they’ve accepted it. I would rather have three appetizers when I go to a restaurant than one entrée.

LG: It’s Dinner in Minutes time now. It’s Italian Minestrone and it only takes 20 minutes to make and it won’t break the calorie bank. See my recipe on www.dinnerinminutes.com.

Fred Tasker, Miami Herald Wine Columnist’s wine trends for 2008

No. 1: Naked chardonnays.
Honest, that’s what they call them. Twenty years ago, California winemakers started pumping up the flavors in their chardonnays to wine contests. They aged them for a year or more in brand-new oak barrels, making them smell like vanilla, or even oak. And they put them through a secondary fermentation to reduce their acids, making them softer and sweeter. It was Ok at first, but then it got out of hand. Chardonnays got so sweet and buttery, even tasting like caramel, that you couldn’t drink them with food. They simply overpowered it. I spend decades recommending chardonnay for sipping - if you like pineapple juice - but sauvignon blanc to go with food.

I’m happy to say they’re coming to their senses. They’re even putting out chardonnays with no oak aging at all. Kim Crawford’s chardonnay from New Zealand has no oak, and it’s crisp and refreshing. Sebastiani has one that’s equally good. So by naked, they mean their chardonnay is no longer cloaked in oak. Sorry to disappoint you if you were hoping for actual nudity.

No.2 And here’s a supposed trend that won’t happen. Last week the advertising agency JWT put out a release called 80 things to watch in 2008. Some of them make sense. Keira Knightley will be hot. No argument there. Vena Cava will be the big fashion name. What do I know. But when they say tequila will become the new wine, I have to part company. Tequila is getting better, and it’s popular with new drinkers because it’s so heavily advertised. But it’s even the best tequila is only a few steps from diesel fuel, and will never replace wine. My wino friends and I will stand in the hustings and prevent it. To the death. You got a problem with that?

No. 3 Last trend: More and more wines will come in screw caps. All the best white wines from New Zealand already do. A California winery called Plumpjack has a $140 a bottle cabernet sauvignon in a screwcap. As long as corks keep spoiling wine with cork taint, and they seem to be doing that, screw caps will continue to grow.