Birmingham Restaurant Week: Primeaux Cheese + Vino

After thinking about Primeaux for a while -- and if you taste their cheese plate, you'll be thinking about it too -- I've come to the realization that it wasn't what I was expecting. They're located out at the Summit, but aren't in a ridiculously large space. Both their food and wine are top-notch, but none of it is pretentious. Considering the people involved, I shouldn't be too surprised. Full disclosure: Chef Cory Bolton, his wife (!!!) Ashley AKA Primeaux's pastry chef, Sous Chef Grayson Taft, and Front of House Manager Melissa Pickering, all worked with my husband at Ocean. They're friends, and they know their shit, so it's not too surprising that my friend Taylor and I had a fantastic meal.

To start the meal, I ordered the budget-friendly rosé. With summer still in full swing, rosé is one of my favorite ways to cool down. It was dry with a nice bit of acid and a mineral-rich finish, which you may have guessed is what I like in wine. After a bit, Melissa replaced that with a glass of the Domaine Gueneau Sancerre Rosé which was exactly what I wanted but didn't know I wanted. Trust your servers, bartenders, and industry friends, y'all.

The apps came next. I started out with the charcuterie and cheese board, while Taylor chose the crabmeat cheesecake.* For the Restaurant Week version, they scaled it down to be closer to a single portion. Cured meat and cheese are two of my very favorite things, and the speck (a type of prosciutto) and salami were on point. Then there was the cheese. Oh my goodness, the cheese.

The cheese board itself included tastes of D'Affinois and a slightly firmer cheese, but Cory also let us taste the sottocenere di tartufo, a soft cheese made from raw cow's milk that had pieces of black truffle. Ridiculously good. I was enjoying the food enough that I forgot to take the photo until after a couple pieces had been eaten. Oops!

Taylor's appetizer was a riff on a crab cake. Instead of adding new ingredients to simple crab cakes, the crabmeat was worked into a rich, savory cheesecake with a pecan crust. It was rich, but the crabmeat was tender without being rubbery. It was also so good that both of us were discussing the likelihood of the existence of an entrée-sized version of the dish.

We'd both ordered the Cubano as our main course. Like the cheesecake, it's also a riff on a classic dish. It's pretty much cheese, housemade pickles, and spicy mustard with as much meat as can be physically stuffed into a sandwich, but it's done intentionally, and it shows. This sandwich is not a traditional Cuban sandwich, nor is it meant to be, but it hits all the notes of what you want a sandwich to be.

To finish, we had two desserts. The lemon icebox pie isn't on their Restaurant Week menu, but the well-spiced crust set off the tart and sweet filling just right. To be honest, I barely touched the pie because I was too busy contemplating and devouring the bourbon cherry dark chocolate tiramisu. At many other places, desserts flavored with bourbon use it very subtly. This dessert is bourbon-forward, with the tangy whole cherries and dark chocolate flavors filling out the flavor of the light, fluffy cake and rich filling.

With great food, better friends, and an excellent wine selection, I'll be back for more. Who wouldn't?

*These appetizers are available at both lunch and dinner. The Cubano is part of the lunch menu, not the dinner menu, and the desserts are only on the dinner menu.

Check out the Birmingham Restaurant Week website and James Martin's blog The Sipologist for more Restaurant Week coverage.

Birmingham Restaurant Week: Ocean

Two weeks ago, I told Adam that I was taking him on a date to a mystery location during Restaurant Week. Although he had worked at Ocean for four-and-a-half years, he had never gotten to eat there as a guest. It was entirely a surprise until an hour and 45 minutes before our reservations, but that's a story for another day. I've eaten at Ocean a few times when Adam misfired (accidentally ordered) something and once as a guest. After meeting Adam's restaurant family over the years, it was awesome to get to treat him to a meal. And what a meal. As a heads up, this post will be longer than most others since Adam and I ate the entire Restaurant Week menu. All of it.

Apparently the restaurant has recently switched over to bread from Birmingham Breadworks. We got to try some of the crostini and some of the Breadworks baguettes with a ramekin of olive oil and parmesan. While we were still working on the bread, the appetizers came out. The first one I tried, the papa à la pomodoro, was a rustic tomato soup. The garlic and basil added a bit of depth and spice, and as Adam said, it was like a texture-rich gazpacho.

Adam's first app, the beet salad, combined a lot of different ingredients to craft a much more complex dish. Both the golden and red beets were earthy, and golden beets gave it a bit of sweetness. The blood orange and avocado oil drizzled on top was a nice counterpoint to the beets' earthiness, while the dried kalamata olives gave it a tidge of saltiness. The goat cheese and candied pecans added creaminess and crunch, respectively, and rounded out the dish in a lovely way.

When the main course was served, I started with the salmon while Adam gave the snapper the first treatment. The salmon's risotto set (what was served with the fish) was buttery and creamy, and the bit of peach bar-b-que sauce was both sweet and tangy. But the fish itself was cooked to a perfect mid-rare, which made it the perfect counterpoint to the creamy set.

Adam's snapper was more of traditional Southern comfort food. The succotash that went along with the fish was a comforting mix of fresh summer vegetables. The snapper was mild, and the tastes blended almost perfectly. I had no trouble finishing the rest of the dish even though I was already full of bread and appetizer. We each got a different white wine -- Adam's was really close to the one I drank at Satterfield's. Mine was slightly less acidic, but paired quite nicely with the fish.

Then came dessert. The fig and cipollini tart wasn't the dessert I was most excited to try, but it was quite different from others I'd experienced during Birmingham Restaurant Week. The bruléed figs that were served with the tart were amazing -- the sugar on them was crisp, and the fruit itself was tender. Though the figs were the dominant element, the onion flavor came through in the second half of the flavor of the tart. The texture was quite lovely, and the flavor combination was unique.

After dinner, we headed to Octane for Daiquiri/Gimlet?/Daiquiri night to round out our tour of previous employers and to see some friends who had headed that way. If anything could round out a night perfectly, that was it.

Check out the Birmingham Restaurant Week website and James Martin's blog The Sipologist for more Restaurant Week coverage. 

Birmingham Restaurant Week: Satterfield's

One of the biggest reasons I've been excited to blog about food for Restaurant Week is finally getting to visit places where my friends work. Several of my friends from various points in my life are part of the team at Satterfield's. I was lucky enough to have one of them (hi, Lucky!) as my server for the evening.

When I was looking up info on BYOB's lunch offering, I also checked out the Satterfield's menu. Though I was torn between the two apps and the two entrées, the dessert option had me daydreaming all day. After traveling to New Orleans for Tales of the Cocktail last month, I was excited to get some beignets in my life again.

But before dessert, there were two other courses. For the first, I chose the cold corn soup. The rich texture and nutty taste were offset by a slight spice that built a bit with every bite. The corn was sweet, and the Arbequina olive oil garnishing the soup added a lovely richness.

Since I was seated at the chef's counter, I had a wonderful view of the kitchen at work. I got to see both the tile fish and the Fudge Family Farms pork entrées being prepared, and both looked absolutely delicious.

Although the Restaurant Week cocktail sounded tasty, I was more in the mood for a glass of wine. Lucky set me up with an awesome glass of dry white wine that carried a nice acidity and minerality. It was absolutely perfect to cut the richness of the first two courses.

When it came down to it, I chose the pork. When I started eating, I immediately found it was a great choice. From the first bite, it was creamy with a slight crunch from the vegetables. The tomatoes' texture was still spot on, even after their time in the pan, and provided a lovely acidity that balanced the sauce's creaminess.

But the pork was the real showstopper. After it's added to the pan, the sauce cooks down with the meat and the flavors merge. By the time it's served, it's so tender it almost melts into the sauce. I ate all of it, and if the beignets weren't coming, I would've tried to get more of the pasta and vegetable mix -- it was that good.

Last but not least was the beignets. They were fried to a slightly crispy perfection and coated with sugar. The peaches were still fresh and sweet, and with the homemade vanilla ice cream were the perfect accompaniment for the fried delights. You'll probably get tired of my saying this, but Adam and I will be back here for some sort of special occasion. And if you want to eat from this menu, make your reservations now: Satterfield's isn't open on Sundays.

Check out the Birmingham Restaurant Week website and James Martin's blog The Sipologist for more Restaurant Week coverage. 

Thankful things

Thanksgiving has been one of my favorite holidays for quite some time. Since I began trying to live mindfully of the people I love and things I do, I've found that gratitude for all parts of my life puts everything else in perspective. Suddenly, things that seem overwhelming or frightening become opportunities for growth and development. In that vein, here are some things I'm thankful for:

• Work. I have three jobs I love. They are immensely fulfilling and amazingly fun, pay my rent and allow me to live a rich and full life.
• Deadlines. Though writing challenges me to learn constantly, it also provides me with a solid alternate source of income. Though I have six deadlines coming up within the next week, they are proof that I've made an amazing amount of progress in my career. I can't wait for the stress of this spell of deadlines to be over, but I'm more excited to see the results of this intense spell of writing.
• Friends. My friends are my support system. I'm doubly lucky that I count my coworkers as friends, so I'm able to spend time with my loved ones even when I'm at work. They're amazing.
• Cooking. The Crockpot is my best friend. I'm able to make large batches of relatively healthy food...while I'm writing or bartending or elsewhere. Sharing food is a beautiful way to show love, and large quantities help with that tremendously.
• Family. Outside of my blood relatives, I have developed an amazingly loving family that accepts me totally and completely. Not only that, I have a kind and handsome man to share my life. I am deeply lucky to spend even the tiniest corners of time with my Adam, and can't wait to see what the next years will bring.

What are you grateful for?

Fiercely feminine

Being a woman in the South isn't easy. Social pressures build the image of the perfect woman as demure, witty but not too smart and permanently happy. As the daughter of teachers, I was brought up to believe that living fully required the pursuit of knowledge. Though I was taught respect, I wasn't taught to suppress my opinions to garner public favor or to act any less intelligent than I am. I was brought up to be a nerd, and it's now a comfortable part of my identity.

When I started my first office job, being a woman wasn't easy. Within a month, I had found out that raises and promotions were scarce, and for women they were almost nonexistent. Most of my female coworkers had gotten married straight out of college and their lives revolved around their work and husbands. Yes, there was a significant age difference between us, but our interests rarely overlapped. My main point of connection with the others was through the knitting group that met twice a week. Even though I kept quiet for most of the time to avoid offending anyone, knitting became my camouflage.

Outside of work, knitting has always been a way to befriend other women. I've spent hours detangling yarn over wine while talking about breakups and childhood and friendship and knitting and sometimes nothing. These sessions have taught me patience, grace and meditation. My gentle friends have helped me to relax through and in knitting, teasing me about my tight stitches (seriously, it was ridiculous) and giving me room to adjust into a more comfortable technique.

Most importantly, knitting has taught me friendship. After a rough breakup, one of my friends sat with me while I untangled a lot of yarn. I wasn't talking, but she was showing me a very deep love by being there. As another friend says, "That's what friends do. They sit." For me, knitting with others is sitting. It's a way to be there without the pressure of conversation or convention. It's a space to relax into the motions and to sort out the tangled threads of thought.

Recently, I haven't been knitting. I haven't been spending time with my support network or the beautiful women who taught me so much. It's past time to pick it back up, but time and financial constraints have restricted my ability to do so. With the weather getting colder, there will probably nights in the near future where I curl up with a mug of tea, blanket and my knitting for some well-deserved rest, but for right now, I'll just nap.

Stuck inside this rut that I fell into by mistake

In college, overcommitment and sleep deprivation were not the norm. They were the expectation. Studying physics and English literature, interning (then freelancing), working the occasional part-time job and tutoring filled my days and much of my nights. Starting a job in a corporate environment after college didn’t help my schedule. Instead of freeing up time I would have tutored to make ends meet, my desk job motivated me to tutor more so that I would be doing some meaningful work. After each day of 7-10 hours of mind-numbing digital paper pushing, it became one of the only reminders that I had the potential to make a difference in the world.

During these days, I honed my social media connectivity skills and plumbed the depths of my nerdiness with the podcasts and amazing websites that my friends had shared. At work, I made one close friend within my department. We quickly figured out a schedule of legitimate-ish activities that broke up the (web surfing and) data entry. However, the first few days were rough. Neither of us knew if the other was a well-disguised psychopath or, as it turned out, an Archer aficionado and YouTube master. He started roughly three weeks before I did and turned in his two weeks' notice four days before I did the same.

After we stopped working way out Highway 280 (Pass the "Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here" sign, go up the hill and it'll be your next right), we kept up through e-mail and social media. Kind of.

Aside from the friends I work or live with, most of my social interactions resemble a game of catch up. Most of what I know about their lives comes from either their social media profiles or their responses to a random text. Part of it comes from an inherent fear of what will happen if I let go of a part of my busyness. I have been a tutor AND student AND freelance writer for long enough living any other way is ... inconceivable.

Recently, I have started trying to pry away little pieces of that busyness to make time for family, friends and self-care. My budget got even tighter, but the time I have to enjoy is much more valuable. If not for social media, most of these conversations would be inquiries about mutual friends and their quotidian activities. Instead, we talk music and religion and beer and science and love.

The main problem now is figuring out a way to allot just a bit more time each day to communicating with friends. For now, I'll stick with the relationships I have -- they're way more entertaining than cable.

Today’s title courtesy of Relient K’s “Be My Escape.”

Letter to my 16-year-old self

Dear 16-year-old self, You are beautiful as you are, and you will get better with age. As you build muscle and your curves fill out, your weight will redistribute itself. Building a personal style will get easier, so dress to your shape.

Your heart may be broken now, but you are not. Over the next few years, you will love more deeply than you think possible. Friends are going to cycle through your life and some will leave it for good. Though it's a cliche, it's a cliche for a reason.

The work you're doing now is worth it. Right now, you're learning how to write and how to write in very short form on social media. You'll make it out of high school before Facebook gets so creepy you can't start over elsewhere. You'll learn how to start over closer to home, and you'll form a community there.

Best of all, it gets better. People share your sense of humor and taste in music. In a couple years, you'll be interviewing the bands you love now. Don't limit yourself to one career possibility and try everything when you have the chance.

It may be self-serving for me to tell you to live long and well, but I'll do it anyways. Love you.

Clair

Love me like a rock

According to Merriam-Webster, the term "nuclear family" was coined first in 1947. Because of its Cold War origins, the phrase has several layers of meaning. In an atom, the nucleus is tightly packed and contains only two types of particles, which might be considered analogous to the expected male and female roles within the family.

In a solid, the atoms are rigidly structured, much like suburbia in the 1940s (and today). However, outside of the nucleus, the electrons are most likely moving in a certain area most of the time. Young, newly formed families were moving far away from their kin, much like the particle movement in an atom.

The other layer is the explosive potential demonstrated by the atomic bomb only two years before the term was coined. Here, energy is generated by a particle hitting the nucleus of an atom, which induces a change in the nucleus. More on that here. During the 1960s and 70s, social movements started challenging this newly minted convention.

Returning Vietnam veterans and war protesters deepened the generational divide, women's rights became a visible issue and the Cold War dragged on. All of these factors were like particles rushing towards a nucleus to bust it open. With all these changes, typical family structures became, well, not so typical. Thus, the post-modern family was born.

Nowadays, some believe that non-nuclear families provide unsuitable environments for childhood development. I find this generalization simplistic. It assumes both that the entire concept of home is rooted in the Rockwellian vision of the nuclear family and that the households that don't fit into this vision do not -- could not -- provide the same things. Granted, there are some parents who cannot, either by choice or circumstance, but many of my beautiful friends grew up in single parent households or are raising children as single parents. They work harder and sleep less than any other group of individuals I know, and they do it all for their kids.

There's also another component to family that hasn't even been mentioned. To quote Eustache Deschamp, "friends are the relatives you make for yourself." Both my blood relatives and friends are beautiful, messy and imperfect and have taught me that love and home come in different shapes and forms. They have supported me while I learned the difference between love that inspires growth and love that burns away the edges of what you love about yourself. They have comforted me and helped me build back the singed parts with a stronger foundation. Love is everything.

Today's title comes from Paul Simon's "Love Me Like A Rock." When my family went on car trips, my dad would spend hours beforehand making mix tapes for different parts of the drive. Because all of us knew all of the lyrics to most of Paul Simon's songs, either a song or an album usually cycled through the mix during the trip.

Full disclosure: the first part of this post was adapted from an essay on the role of "Sesame Street" as a (seriously) post-modern family structure.

Give thanks, y'all

Last year, the list of things that make me thankful was scribbled on the cover page of a physics problem set along with my drawing of a turkey. This year, my list is even simpler.

I'm thankful for: 1. My family by blood. They might be 50 shades of crazy, but they raised me to be focus more on what I have and how much love is in my life. 2. Adam. My friend and partner holds me tight and keeps me (as) sane (as possible). He has phenomenal taste in people who have welcomed me with open arms. 3. My family by choice. I have a community of friends who've supported me through heartbreak and anger and celebrations. Their strength and love has been a true inspiration for healing and growth. 4. Social media. I've met many amazing people through Twitter, and Facebook allows me to keep connected to friends and family all over the world. 5. Beer. Birmingham's craft beer scene has grown exponentially as I've watched, thanks in part to the work of Free The Hops. I have gotten to know many wonderful individuals in real life over beers in the city. 6. Bonfires. I'm pretty sure lighting fires within city limits is illegal, mmkay? Because it's illegal, none of my friends would ever do that. Ever. Now that's out of the way, some of my favorite memories are from my friends' backyard snuggled into winter coats around a bonfire with a bowl of stew. 7. Photos. They add beauty and can remind you of people and places that would not be present in your life otherwise. 8. My tiny apartment. It's not large, glamorous or tidy, but it's weatherproof and feels like home. 9. Tutoring. I love this job, and getting the chance to relearn entire subjects is so much fun. Work-wise, only writing comes close to the satisfaction of watching my kids' moments of discovery and comprehension.