Food from the Cakebread Cellars

THE FOOD CLUB

When Chef Richard Haake went to meet the famille Cakebread of the eponymous winery in Napa Valley, he was firmly told that they were not in the business of food and wine, but of wine and food. It was a lesson he's taken to heart.

The way he tells it, the wineries of Napa Valley each have a restaurant where wine club members, wine buyers from the food and beverage industry and stray visitors can try the wines. There is probably a whole breed of chefs in California's wine-growing district whose food is a mere accompaniment to the all-important wines.

Richard Haake arrived at Cakebread Cellars via the legendary French Laundry, run by the super-talented, neurotically-charged Thomas Keller who is rumoured to creep up to his assistants in the kitchen and hiss in their ear, "You're going to ruin me by doing it that way."

It's the diametric opposite of Hiro Sone's kitchen in Terra, the restaurant that did north Italian food with a hint of Japanese in it.

I caught up with Haake's food philosophy at a lunch he'd laid out at New Delhi's Taj Palace Hotel; by the time you read this, he'll be winding up his special food with wine menu at Mumbai's J W Marriott Hotel.

It's always an eye-opener to talk to chefs about their philosophy of food. Some have been influenced by their mothers; others by their cooking schools, their seniors at their first kitchen, their travels, their surroundings, market forces or by a combination of any or all of the above.

Richard Haake is no exception: it is clear that the spiritual mother of Californian cuisine, Alice Waters, has shaped the way he looks at ingredients. Every one of his plates virtually screamed Local, Fresh and Seasonal: the anthem of Waters and her brigade.

When you're cooking food that is meant specifically as a punctuation between one wine and another, there are a few rules. The first of these is that flavours should be as harmonious as possible: assertive spices or mouth-puckeringly sour ingredients aren't quite the ticket to match a delicate wine.

It must be quite galling for a chef to be told what to cook, and how to cook it. Nobody said anything about playing down textures and colours, however, so Haake has devised a rather ingenious way of asserting his personality.

My Melange of Belgian Endives, Watercress and Roasted Baby Beet Salad with Candied Pecans and Goat Cheese had as much colour as a riotous sunset in Berkeley.

The cheese had been kept to a minimum so that its strong flavour would not overpower the accompanying wine, a Benzinger Chardonnay from the Sonoma County, leaving the endives and watercress to fill the plate with colour.

With my Grilled Filet Mignon with Foie Gras Stuffed Morel Mushrooms and Cabernet Demi Glaze, you could tell that Haake had devised the richness of the dish to be paired with a full-blown Cabernet Sauvignon. The dish was a study in contrasting textures. Thus did Haake slip in his signature, with all the rules of wine pairing intact.