chef’s table
BIG IDEAS
Stella connects diners with deliciously prepared and sustainably cultivated cuisine.
WRITTEN BY SANDRA MACIAS
PHOTOS BY SHEA EVANS
On the road linking downtown Truckee to Lake Tahoe is Stella, a small dinner house with big ideas. Not timid about thinking out of the box, the restaurant at The Cedar House Sport Hotel is full of surprises, from its food to its design — starting with its open kitchen.
Most restaurants’ open kitchens have a counter or other barrier dividing them from the dining room. Not at Stella. Other than prep tables, which are in use, the kitchen is completely open. You can watch your dinner cook, if you wish.
“The kitchen is part of the show,” says Patty Baird, owner-director of The Cedar House, “and hopefully, diners feel more connected to the food being prepared for them.”
The live action here is better than Food Network. While Chef Jacob Burton supervises, his staff is busy, mixing, stirring, chopping, cooking. One is stationed at the Italian wood-fired oven where he slips food in and out of the red inferno burning between 900 and 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
Masterful morsels
And ah, the food. One of the most fabulous things to emerge from that oven is the fire-roasted marrow bones, cupping sizzling-hot marrow made deliciously richer with a splash of extra-virgin olive oil. Other masterful morsels from the oven include house-made sourdough bread, as good as San Francisco’s, and wood-fired cruciferous veggies sweetened with the kiss of fire.
At Stella, breads rise naturally with house-made starter and savory house-cured meats fill its charcuterie. Produce, mainly organic, comes from Sacramento farms while summer’s bounty of salad greens, heirloom tomatoes, squash, and herbs comes from The Cedar House’s own gardens. Fish, poultry, and meat are from sustainable farms and fisheries.
The eclectic menu favors international flavors. French, Italian, and Asian influences meld with the latest cuisine movement, molecular gastronomy popularized by Spanish chef Ferran Adria who introduced the world to vegetable foams and fruit caviar.
The menu is short and succinct, printed on one side of a standard sheet of paper. What is fun is you can design your own four-course tasting menu from the selections or order à la carte.
Tough choices
Warning: choosing four items is hard; everything sounds intriguing. Your first plunge might be with the hamachi sashimi, lined up on a bed of pickled cucumbers and wakame salad with a topping of cantaloupe caviar. The “caviar,” looking like salmon roe, pops in your mouth with a burst of fruity sweetness. Your taste buds race to unravel the intricate tapestry of flavors.
Summer dishes include a pan-roasted halibut, served on a cherry tomato salad tossed with an Asian vinaigrette of fish sauce and rice wine.
“It blew everyone out of the water last summer,” says Chef Burton, a grad of the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco.
Burton’s other tasty summer inspirations include a “BLT appetizer” of striped-Zebra tomato sorbet, braised pork belly and seasonal greens, and a chicken roulade, a summer 2011 “home run,” as Burton puts it. Chicken breast, thinly pounded, is wrapped around a mixture of provolone, prosciutto, and caramelized onions before it’s dipped into a tempura batter and deep fried. Oh, yeah!
Eco property
The rest of Stella’s story is as interesting as its food. Its name, for instance, is a revival of another Stella restaurant located in the same spot. To make way for the new Stella (opened in March 2010), the 1950s-era building was completely remodeled, using recycled materials from an old motel in Truckee.
Stella is small: 38 seats inside — with patio dining for 24 more in summer. Yet, as small as it is, you don’t feel crowded because the dining room is airy with vaulted, beam ceilings and lots of glass windows and doors. On the days it is closed, Stella is available for corporate events, private parties, and weddings — the latter often causes a sold-out weekend.
For those reasons, plan ahead when you want to go. Reservations: required. You can make them a month in advance.
Sandra Macias, a longtime Reno food writer, loves anything baked or fire roasted in a wood-fired oven. Since she has no place in her kitchen for one, she’ll gladly feast at Stella, starting with those fabulous marrow bones.
RESOURCES
Stella
At The Cedar House Sport Hotel
10918 Brockway Road, Truckee, Calif., 530-582-5655
www.Cedarhousesporthotel.com and follow the link to Stella
Open 5:30 p.m. Wed. – Sun., mid-June through summer
Open 5:30 p.m. Thurs. – Sun. during fall, winter, and spring
Reservations required
Details About Cedar House Sport Hotel
The Cedar House Sport Hotel, an über eco-lodge in Truckee, is a great choice for a getaway. The pluses are many: It’s a short trip away; its setting slows you down instantly; and its signature restaurant, Stella, is a gem.
The hotel, owned by Jeff and Patty Baird of Truckee, is modeled after the small, family-run hotels found in the European Alps. The 40 rooms, including six two-room suites, feature European-style bedding, spa bath products, and flat screen LCD TVs. A complimentary continental breakfast and free Wi-Fi are included.
The hotel itself is an architectural piece of “green” art. Built of cedar, logged less than 60 miles away, recycled timber, and raw steel, the lodge has won awards for its innovative design and green construction. As a destination hotel, it was listed in Travel and Leisure’s 2011 edition of The World’s Greatest Hotels, Resorts, and Spas.
For outdoor adventurers, there is an in-house touring company (see related story on Tahoe Trips & Trails on page xx) to help you plan a Sierra experience. As for the rest of us travelers, it’s all about relaxing with a book, taking a stroll through historic downtown Truckee, or exploring the area on your own. For details, call 866-582-5655 or visit www.Cedarhousesporthotel.com.
Recipe
Butter Lettuce Salad with Tarragon, Pine Nuts, Orange Supremes
(courtesy of Chef Jacob Burton, Stella restaurant, Truckee, Calif., serves 3. To see a video on preparing the recipe, visit www.Stellaculinary.com/tcd3)
Although restaurants love to tempt you with some of their more creative appetizers, sometimes you just want to start your meal with a good, green salad. This is the one I crave above all others.
1 head of butter lettuce will yield three large salads
5 orange supremes per salad (suggest Valencia or blood orange)
5 – 7 leaves of fresh tarragon per salad
Pinch fleur de sel (French sea salt)
¼ – ½ ounce pine nuts per salad
Sherry-shallot vinaigrette (see below)
Start by pulling off the outer leaves of the butter lettuce and stack, with each stem facing opposite directions, while working your way into the crisp, inner leaves as you build your salad. The whole idea is to make the salad look somewhat like a flower while conveying height and structure. At the end of the stacking process, I like to gently press down into the center of the salad using my fingers. You will hear the salad “crunch” while compressing together, giving you a more stable presentation that can be carried from the kitchen to the table.
Using our sherry-shallot vinaigrette (or any vinaigrette you prefer), dress the salad on the plate. Having a squeeze bottle is important for this step because it allows you to work the nozzle in between the leaves, distributing the vinaigrette throughout the salad. Although you can use any vinaigrette you wish, I recommend an “emulsified” vinaigrette because it will cling better to the butter lettuce and stand up to its “watery crunch.”
Next, distribute toasted pine nuts throughout the folds of the butter lettuce. The pine nuts add a nice “meaty” flavor and crunch.
Pick individual leaves of tarragon and place randomly throughout the salad so that the tips of the tarragon leaves “pop” out from the salad.
Garnish with five orange supremes and season with fleur de sel. An orange supreme is a citrus segment without any seeds, pith, or membrane. For a video on how to create an orange supreme, visit Stellaculinary.com/podcasts/video/how-slice-citrus-supremes. Serve immediately.
Sherry-Shallot Vinaigrette
This is one of my all-time favorite vinaigrettes, and we use it so often at Stella, we’ve started referring to it internally as our “house vin.” Between the bite of the sherry vinegar, the sweetness of the honey, and the tang of the stone-ground mustard, this dressing goes great with just about any variety of greens. We currently use this vinaigrette for our butter lettuce salad. You can see the video on creating this dressing by visiting www.Stellaculinary.com/recipes/sherry-shallot-vinaigrette. Serves 25. (Will last for a month, refrigerated.)
1 shallot
3 ounces sherry vinegar
7 ounces Champagne vinegar
2 ounces mustard
4 ounces honey
1 tablespoon salt (kosher)
½ tablespoon sugar
3 ounces olive oil
20 ounces canola oil
Start by adding all the ingredients, including the oil, to the blender. Blend ingredients, starting the blender on its lowest speed, and gradually working it up to the fastest speed possible. As the vinaigrette starts to come together, an emulsion will form. Once this vortex is formed and the vinaigrette appears to have a smooth consistency, simply turn off the blender. Store the sherry-shallot vinaigrette in a food-safe squeeze bottle and refrigerate. It will hold in the refrigerator for two weeks.
