Last year brought us the defining presidential election of our time. This year, I'm hoping all of the grassroots drive and energy behind President-elect Barack Obama's win can be channeled to achieve even more good. One admirable project aimed at doing just that is Ideas for Change in America, a collaboration between Change.org and about 50 other organizations, most notably MySpace.

How it works: During the last few weeks of 2008, Change.org accepted thousands of submissions and votes from the public on specific policy ideas to propose to the new president. Voting begins today through January 15th on the top rated ideas across categories like Sustainable Food and Fair Trade—from legalizing raw milk nationwide to, as Michael Pollan suggested, replacing the South Lawn of the White House with an organic garden. Then on January 16th, the 10 most popular ideas will be presented to the new administration at an event at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.

One of my many new year’s resolutions includes learning to embrace the cocktail. The inspiration: 1) A late night at NYC bar PDT, where mixologist extraordinaire Jim Meehan carefully crafted me a Green Deacon only to have me take a few sips, hang my head and sheepishly ask for a beer; and 2) My miserable score on F&W's spirits quiz. Despite Food & Wine’s trendspotting cocktail coverage and NYC’s radical mixology scene I’ve been slow to find a true appreciation for perfectly made drinks, simply because I never order them.

But I took advantage of the busy end-of-year social scene, and made a concerted effort to expand my mixology knowledge. I’m already off to a pretty good start after trying a fabulous new cocktail at NYC's L’Artusi, my favorite West Village restaurant. I love listening to wine director/owner Joe Campanale tell compelling stories about the esoteric Italian wines he’s always pouring, but on recent visits I've found myself ordering the Jester, a delicious, slightly tart cocktail crafted by Campanale and assistant beverage director Aaron Sherman. The two young talents were experimenting with some of their favorite Italian spirits and came up with this riff on the Negroni Sbagliato. Sbagliato means "wrong" or "incorrect" because you use a sparkling white wine (Campanale is slightly obsessed with white lambrusco, which he uses here) instead of the usual gin. The L'Artsui tweak swaps out the standard campari with amari, a bitter Italian after-dinner drink. The result is my first love affair with a cocktail.

The Jester
by Aaron Sherman and Joe Campanale
1oz. Ramazzotti Amaro
1oz. Carpano Antico vermouth
.5oz lemon juice
Lini Lambrusco Bianco or dry sparkling white wine
lemon peel

Add Ramazzotti, Carpano Antica Formula and lemon juice to a mixing glass filled with ice. Stir. Strain into chilled Champagne flute, top with Lambrusco Bianco and garnish with lemon peel.

 

I've already hit the slopes twice this season and have at least three more trips planned for 2009. Here are the newest après-ski hangouts I'll be visiting after spending a day in the snowboard park.

*The Hourglass, the laid-back bar in the spectacular new Stowe Mountain Resort at the base of Mt. Mansfield in Vermont, has an awesome selection of regional microwbrews (the signature Hourglass Ale is made exclusively for the resort by Rock Art Brewery) and an überlocal bar menu from chef Sean Buchanan, which includes dishes like dry-rubbed Misty Knoll chicken wings with mint-yogurt sauce and flatbread topped with delicious artisanal ingredients like Grafton aged cheddar and Maple Brook Farm mozzarella.

*The new $1 billion Snowmass Base Village in Aspen, Colorado, has a handful of hot new post-ski spots, including Liquid Sky at the base of the new gondola, plus two new restaurants in the pipes from Jeffrey Klein, founder of Aspen’s Matsuhisa.
   
*The 8100 Mountainside Bar and Grill in the new Park Hyatt Beaver Creek in Colorado is conveniently located at the base of Beaver Creek Mountain. Its 20-seat bar has a small-plates menu featuring local ingredients (buffalo from Great Range Buffalo Farms in Colorado; salmon and halibut flown in daily from Seattle’s Pikes Place Fish Market), as well as local Colorado wines, microbrews and local organic spirits. Chef Reese Hay is gong to be making marshmallows in flavors like Grand Marnier for toasting during s’mores happy hour at the outdoor fire pit.

*I fell in love with Moody’s in Truckee, California, a few years back and am thrilled to learn that its supertalented chef, Mark Estee, is opening a second restaurant, Baxter’s, at the Village at Northstar in Tahoe, California. Expect the same selection of exceptional house-made charcuterie and salumi, as well as an extensive list of eaux-de-vie, a wine list heavy on Pinot Noirs and dangerously good cocktails like Baxter’s Naughty Cider–a concoction of unfiltered organic apple juice, Charbay Tahitian vanilla rum and brown sugar topped with spiced-rum whipped cream.

Bread has enjoyed a wildly varying reputation at restaurants over the past decade. It’s been banned from the table (in LA, as low-carb diets swept the city). It’s been canonized (at NYC's Bouley, where the bread cart has been stacked with more than twenty varieties). It’s been taken even further than that at Chicago’s excellent new L20, where chef Laurent Gras creates an amazing mini-bread tasting inspired by the petit-fours service in fancy dining rooms (there’s a name for such small bites in French, mignardise). But no matter what, it's always been free. Now, though, as restaurants turn to extreme comfort food menus and cost-cutting measures that don't sacrifice quality (or at least that don't seem to sacrifice quality), bread has found a new place–on the appetizer list, with a price tag. At Manhattan’s Ssäm Bar, David Chang serves a baguette with two butters: sea-salt butter from Vermont and St. Helen’s Farm goat's butter from Britain (there’s invariably a provenance next to the butter and sometimes the salt, but never the bread). It’s exceptional enough that Frank Bruni called it out in his recent three-star Times review of the place: “Ssäm  charges $8 [for this], rightly wagering that if you really value bread and butter, you’d rather pay for something superior than get something ordinary for free.” In Brooklyn, Clover Club serves a terrific brunch on weekends, and the mandatory starter is toasted baguette with little bowls of brandied orange marmalade, butter and salt for $5. (Incidentally, if you’re wondering where to find the city's best bartenders on a Sunday afternoon, look no further than Clover Club – the place is packed with them.) The trend has even spread to the West Coast: Spring Hill in Seattle serves three warm, soft rolls with cultured butter and sea salt (from kauai), at a cost of $3.

My friends must have been inspired by F&W’s list of 20 spectacular holiday parties in the December issue because this month has turned into one nonstop party – cocktail parties, cookie swap parties, Mad Men–themed parties, Monday Night Football parties, dinner parties. I can barely keep up with finding enough cute party dresses, let alone finding the perfect hostess gifts. You can never go wrong with bubbly or booze. Here, some more personalized gift ideas that I’ve found to be a hit on the party circuit:
 
*Mixology Tools
Roost’s Elixir bar straw set is a great addition to any home bartender’s collection. The platinum-tipped stirrers come in a wooden holder so they won’t ever get lost.  

* Utilitarian Vases
Fashion designer Reem Acra told me about Hope Forever’s blossoming “plastivases”. They take form when filled up with water and fold flat for easy storage when not being used.

*Hoppy Complements
Vosges Haut Chocolat’s Beer and Bacon gift box pairs Oregon’s Rogue Shakespeare, a deliciously hoppy oatmeal stout, with Vosges’s salty, sweet applewood smoked bacon milk chocolate bars.

*Eco Beauty Bonus
Pangea Organics’ holiday gift sets are filled with exceptional eco-friendly bar soaps, body lotions, face scrubs and hand gels. Even more exciting, the seeds of a spruce tree are embedded in the molded fiber box. Plant it now and you’ll have a Christmas tree by next season.

*Farm Fresh Cheese
Support New England family farms by leasing a Jersey cow in a friend’s name through Rent Mother Nature. Your friend gets three supercreamy 8-ounce wheels of Brie or cheddar cheese, plus regular updates on the cow from its pasture in Vermont.

*Global Dining
Map out your next trip to London, Tokyo, New York City or Paris over dinner with a set of easy-to-clean world map place mats.

 

 

These days, you can’t eat in a neighborhood restaurant without having a special occasion break out at a table near you. It could be a piercing round of “Happy Birthday” or it could be the passing of gifts at a graduation dinner, but it’s these kinds of events that, before the economic downturn, used to be celebrated at special-occasion restaurants. So it’s refreshing to see a family that still has a sense of occasion. That family would be the Clintons, and their choice of place to celebrate the holiday weekend would be South Gate on Manhattan’s Central Park South (which I suppose qualifies as a neighborhood place if you have a particularly appealing zip code). They were all there, having a great time: Bill, Hillary, Chelsea, assorted friends and a sea of Secret Service—who, it’s comforting to know, drink a lot of water and soda but don’t eat on the job. The Clintons mixed up the luxe buffet with some items from the menu (HRC wondered if chef Kerry Heffernan did “South Beach mashed potatoes”—i.e., mashed cauliflower—and he promised he’d have it for her next time). Instead, she dug into roasted rutabaga, while Bill went nuts for the butternut squash flan. “He was so sweet and accommodating,” said Heffernan, who as a head's up for anyone who wants to recreate the Clinton brunch, notes that those items are now moving to the dinner menu. Bill—along with Hillary and Chelsea—was looking exceedingly trim, and that might be why the person next to me sounded awestruck when he noted that Bill hit the buffet table at least three times. Which makes the most economic sense—the current brunch menu is $65, and that’s actually a great deal for Central Park South, especially if you’ve got such a great view of the Clintons. Come 2009, there will be even better deals at South Gate, including a tavern menu and more gently priced lunch and brunch menus. Let's see if the Clintons go back for that.

Jean-Georges Vongerichten's reentry into the steak world,  his J&G Steakhouse quietly opened in Phoenix's Phoenician Hotel last Monday. We’ve been given a peek of the sleek Rockwell Group-designed interior by JGV’s right-hand man, Daniel Del Vecchio. J&G is no V— promising early reviews praise the low prices ($18 for prime hanger steak with frites!) and straight-forward, flavor-packed sauces.

We’re running three tenderloin recipes from Jean-Georges in our April 2009 Master Cook column, plus the J&G signature steak sauce. We’ve been testing them this week, and I have to say, they’re phenomenal. One has made me a late convert to beef cooked sous-vide. (Or, as I now prefer to think of it, slowly simmered in a Ziploc bag packed with flavorings. Somehow, that sounds more manageable—and more delicious—than the rather existential “under emptiness,” as the French can be literally translated.) Under JGV's careful instruction, the beef emerged tender, not spongy, as many sous-vide meats can. Recipes to come when the issue hits stands in early March; to tide you over, check out some of JGV's favorite steak condiments here. Two more photos of J&G after the jump.

 

[More]

Since it's just two days until Christmas, we all decided it would be nice to start the festivities a little early. When F&W wine guru Ray Isle asked how we in the Test Kitchen were, I replied, "We'd be better if we were drinking a little wine." No sooner had Test Kitchen goddess Melissa Rubel suggested something pink and bubbly than Ray returned with a bottle of Pierre Sparr, sparkling rosé. It accompanied the steamed fish I am testing (for April's Tasting & Testing column) brilliantly, not to mention lifted all our spirits. God bless us, every one!

Recently, writer Jonathan Miles pondered that traditional holiday drink: mulled wine. It's fragrant, it's soothing and it’s the official beverage of Charles Dickens's “A Christmas Carol.” The only problem? No one actually craves it. "Mulled wine, like roast goose, is one of those holiday confections that often sounds better than it tastes," Miles writes. Fortunately, he offers some lust-worthy permutations, including a cold punch by former F&W staffer and current Tasting Table editor Nick Fauchald, made primarily with Zinfandel, Becherovka (a cinnamon-and-anise-flavored liqueur from the Czech Republic) and homemade spiced plum syrup.

Personally, I don't have anything against mulled wine. It's eggnog that I've never been able to get around. I've always found it too gloppy, like cloyingly sweet dead weight in the mouth. My modest proposal? Switch to coquito, a Latin take on eggnog with serious coconut flavor, rum and hints of cinnamon and vanilla. Now that's what I consider crave-worthy.

When oil prices went through the roof this summer and airlines started charging all sorts of never-before-seen fees, a lot of my friends were hunkering down, forgoing any air travel, and for the first time, using that odd blend of words: staycation. But now that we're officially in a recession and discretionary spending is being, well, regarded with heavier discretion, airlines have begun slashing their prices to entice travelers. (Airfarewatchdog.com is a particularly great aggregator of airfare deals.)

For those of you about to travel, check out our "Where to Eat Out During the Holidays" guide, showcasing five great restaurants in 10 cities around the country and what special offerings they'll have for the Christmas week. (If I were going to San Francisco, I'd put in an advance order for A16's holiday dishes, like porchetta and whole roasted duck. And according to a quick search on Travelocity.com, I could get to San Francisco next week for a bargain $288 roundtrip.)