2011 – Page 2 – Sporting Road

40 Years of Chez Panise – Book Review **** (4/5)

From Chez Panise "France changed my life forever. I knew I wanted to live the way my French friend did. These were people who thought of good food as an indispensable part of live, for whom each day was punctuated by food-related decisions. It went without saying that one had to get to the bakery early, to get a fresh, hot baguette; naturally one spent an hour or so in the afternoon in a café with one's friends; and of course one only brought produce in season because that when it was least expensive and tasted best. Eating together was the most important daily ritual in their lives, a critical and nonnegotiable time when the flavors and smells of roasted chickens and sizzling garlic, the crunch of crusty bread, and the taste of local wine drew out everyone's most passionate ideas and feelings." The same is true at the château where "friends are always coming over for dinner and we are cooking our way collections of recipes from all kinds of people. As with Chez Panisse, we also found that the people who were obsessive about growing the best-tasting produce were also concerned about the health of the soil, the welfare of beneficial insects and other animals, and the clarity of the water running off their fields. They were interested in rediscovering older varieties that were harder to grow, and less prolific, but much tastier, and which brought a sense of continuity with the past to both their fields and our tables. At dinners with good friends, we talked easily and at length about--everything! The kitchen was a platonic ideal of a kitchen: a fireplace in the corner, stacks of post, and marble

By Sporting Road|October 23rd, 2011|Categories: Book Reviews, Cuisine|Comments Off

What is Instinctive Shooting?

Some of our friends who haven't been wingshooting with us ask what is Instinctive Shooting? Attached is an article from our side-by-side shooting instructor, Buz Fawcett, appropriately entitled "What is Instinctive Shooting?" http://wingshootingworkshop.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/what-is-instinctive-shooting-by-buz-fawcett.pdf

By Sporting Road|October 20th, 2011|Categories: Wingshooting|Comments Off

Trout Country: Reflections on Rivers, Fly Fishing & Related Addictions (Book Review 4/5 ****)

Bob Saile, Trout Country: Reflections on Rivers, Fly Fishing & Related Addictions. Pruett Publishing Co., Boulder, Colorado 1999. My favorite quotes or summaries are as follows: Aside from the Brassie, the most important contribution to the fly boxes of American anglers to come from South Platte lore is the RS-2 —an all-purpose nymph pattern that, depending on size, can resemble the aquatic stages of a midge, a mayfly, or even a caddis. RS-2 stands for “Rim’s Semblance, Style 2.” It was born in the tying vice of Rim Chung of Denver, a self-taught fly fisherman who began as a frustrated spin-fisherman. When Chung came to Colorado from Seoul, South Korea, in 1968, he had a strong desire to catch Colorado trout but only the weakest clues on how to go about it. He began to fish with spinning tackle but rarely caught anything when he encountered the selective trout of the Platte and other waters. Two years later, he was ready to give up. Then a friend suggested he take up fly-fishing. “What the hell is fly-fishing?” Chung asked his friend. Chung then began to fish with dry flies, but it was still frustratingly unproductive or, at best, inconsistent. Finally he met someone who offered to take him nymph fishing. “What the hell is nymph fishing?” Chung asked. His progression to becoming a successful trout fisherman was fairly swift after that. Chung developed his nymphing skills and learned to tie flies. He decided to try to develop a nymph pattern that was a general suggestion—a semblance—of almost any hatching aquatic insect, depending on size. What emerged was a pattern that is constructed with a Tiemco 101 hook that has a straight eye, in sizes as big as 14

By Sporting Road|October 12th, 2011|Categories: Fishing, Fly Tying, Rim Chung, RS2|Comments Off

Check out the new recipe pages

We have added recipes from our favorite travels, near and a far, on the Sporting Road. As the Sporting Road is too vast to feature only French cooking, we have added some our favorite recipes discovered along the Sporting Road, from various cuisines. Please check out our new pages: Argentine Recipes Asian Recipes Hungarian Recipes Moroccan Recipes Spanish Recipes

By Sporting Road|October 11th, 2011|Categories: Cuisine, Recipes, Travel|Comments Off

Buy Local Honey

Alright so the jury is still out on whether local honey can cure mild, seasonal allergies, but no one can deny that it tastes better than filtered honey available at the supermarket. So why not pick up a pint of local honey, it helps your local economies, and it just might be a magic tonic for mild and seasonal dust, mold and pollen allergies. We think it is, but the scientific evidence is still out.

By Sporting Road|October 11th, 2011|Categories: Cuisine, Sweets|Comments Off

International Adventures in Cuisine Along the Sporting Road

Recipes sometimes have as much to do with imagination as it is with flavor. A dish is more than a collection of ingredients. Ingredients come from food and food comes from somewhere. That somewhere may be in the snow or the sun may be a sign of a particular season, and more often than not that somewhere may show through in the final dish. Yet, with my cooking, as everything in life, I make comparisons and find it difficult to settle for second best. I like dishes that are the best—or, at least the best of what that dish can be. Hence, my life-long quest for adventures to find the best recipes and to replicate them in the kitchen, after days spent on the Sporting Road. Because ultimately, no one cares where the ingredients come from, whether they are flown half-way round the world or grown in your own back yard, it simply comes down to this—do I like this or not? Our friend in Paris pointed this out to me one time as I started to debate French pinot noirs with Californian ones. I was arguing that the French ones are better and pointing out the balance of fruitiness, acidity and chalkiness that the French traditionally strive for in Bordeaux wines, while American wine makers often emphasize only the fruitiness. He said he didn’t know enough about Californian Pinot Noirs to say. And, he said, “There is no argument, when it comes to matters of taste. Either you like it or you don’t? It doesn’t matter if you can explain why, it doesn’t make it taste any better.” Like with wine, food stuffs are affected by seasons, growing conditions, harvest times, the amount of water, the terroir,

By Sporting Road|October 9th, 2011|Categories: Cuisine, Recipes, Travel|Comments Off

Standing in a River Waving a Stick (Book Review **** 4/5)

Standing in a River Waving a Stick, New York: Simon & Schuster (1999) by John Gierach My favorite quotes or summaries from this book are: This business of changing fly patterns, looking for the right one, is central to the sport. All of us, secretly or otherwise, believe it’s the fly that makes the difference, although we’ll admit that even the right fly has to be cast accurately and drifted properly to work. Still, when someone is catching more fish than we are --- and when we’re not too embarrassed to ask--we say, “What fly are you using?” as if that one bit of information was all we needed. Okay, but if you ask three different fishermen you’ll probably get three different answers, so you have to suspect that although the knowledge passed on by other fly fishers is a great gift, the true solution is somehow yours and yours alone. Everyone I know who has fly fished for long has theories about fly patterns, all of which sound reasonable enough on a long drive or around a campfire.... The choice of a fly pattern for nymphing can seem too huge to comprehend, and I’ve seen nymph fishers standing like zombies on riverbanks, gazing into open fly boxes, literally frozen by indecision. (I recognize that when I see it because I’ve done it myself.) The thing is, aquatic insects spend most of their lives on the stream bottom, where they are regularly eaten by trout. Mayflies and stone flies have a nymphal stage. These are six-legged, armored bugs that fly fishers think are handsome but I heard one non-anglers describe as looking like wet cockroaches. Caddis flies and midges have bottom-dwelling larval stages that run into pupae

By Sporting Road|October 9th, 2011|Categories: Book Reviews, Fishing, Fly Tying|Comments Off

Hunt, Gather, Cook (Book Review **** 5/5)

Hank Shaw is an award-winning journalist and makes his debut from his blogger's guide to a book on foraging, fishing, hunting, simply entitled Hunt, Gather Cook--and makes the most of the fruits of a day spent gathering food in the field. His blog, Hunter Angler Gardener Cook, has developed an avid following among outdoor people and foodies alike. Hank Shaw's blog, Hunter Angler Gardener Cook, and which is more impressive than the book, can be found at: http://honest-food.net/ His poacher's blog, which is also worthy of mention, despite his bad-form tactics, can be found at: http://huntergathercook.typepad.com/

By Sporting Road|October 8th, 2011|Categories: Book Reviews, Cuisine, Fishing, Recipes, Wingshooting|Comments Off

Not All Lambs Are the Same

Excepted from an Interview with Nick de Toldi at www.gourmetfly.com There is only the need to buy the most prime and expensive cut of lamb for the sort of dishes such as Rack of Lamb or the famous "Baron d'agneau de Pauillac", a roast including the 2 legs and the "saddle" typically served at the prestige dinners of the wine chateaux beatween Margaux and Pauillac. But, I explained to Nick that in Colorado, we frequently encounter Basque sheepherders while hunting Dusky Grouse and Sharptailed Grouse here in September. And, their sheep are eating nearly a pure diet of sage brush, which is very strong-tasting. The mule deer that come from the mountains are very strong and gamey as a result of this same sage brush diet, as compared to our white-tailed deer which feed off of the farmer's grains of the plains. I compared this to our farrier who raises a special breed of lamb for the table and sells them by the whole or half. They are pricey, around $300 to have a whole one butchered and packed. He feeds them a special diet to have them fattened and the best tasting, and they are harvested while they are very young. He reiterated that for the slow braised dishes, you want the heartier and older lambs, while for the quickly cooked chops, you want the young corn-fed or grass-fed varieties.

By Sporting Road|October 8th, 2011|Categories: Cuisine, Recipes|Comments Off

Cento Italian Tomatoes

I used to buy whatever canned tomatoes were on sale in from the grocer. Then I started to realize that tomatoes on the vine, never tasted the same from one to the other, so why should they in the can. And, tomatoes in Italy, never tasted anything like those grown in America, in part to their soil and in part to their seed. San Marzano, Italy, is like the Bordeaux region of tomatoes. But you need to be careful as there are tomatoes that are labeled San Marzano, but grown in the US - referring to the type of seed, not the location of growing. Whatever brand you buy, you need to make sure it's Denominazione di Origine Protetta certified, if you want to make sure it is from San Marzano. These Cento DOP Certified San Marzano tomatoes are the best that can be bought in the US, but cost nearly $5 for a 28 oz can, if you can find them. Cento has a San Marzano varietal that's non DOP, but grown in Italy, which sells for around $2.50for a 35 oz can. Then there's the "Italian Style" Cento's which are grown outside of Italy, maybe even in California, but are Italian style in that they are Roma tomatoes, and cost under $2.00 for a 28 oz can. We find a real difference in tasting the "Italian Style" Cento's to those made in Italy, and those made in Italy are worth the small extra cost. And if you can find them reasonably priced, the DOP Certified San Marzano are worth double the cost of the "made in Italy" tins,, as they are noticeably, however slightly, better. Simply put they are the best in canned tomatoes, if you can afford them, get them.

By Sporting Road|October 8th, 2011|Categories: Cuisine, Recipes|Comments Off

Yearly Archives: 2011