What’s Cooking in Nevada City?
When Kit and I moved to Nevada City, CA two months ago, I reduced my cookbook collection to favorites that now fill a single bookcase in our new dining room. Among them is a vintage, spiral-bound recipe book from Stephenson’s Apple Farm Restaurant near Kansas City. Whenever 4-5 bananas are ripe and ready, Kit bakes a batch of banana bread in three mini loaf pans and shares them with our new neighbors on Crystal Wells Road. (The recipe is available at thecommoningredient.com.)
In addition to perusing cookbooks, I check out recipes that arrive from Sam Sifton’s “NYT Cooking” website and from “Cooking Professionally.” Recipes include classics by famous cookbook writers and others that are the newest craze. “Cooking Professionally” recently published a dynamite recipe for Bang Bang Cauliflower—described as “Crispy, seasoned to perfection and cooked in a sweet, spicy sauce.”
Eager to try it, I headed to our local Nevada City SPD grocery store for the needed ingredients. Our daughter Heidi, a longtime vegetarian, was invited to join us for dinner—Bang Bang Cauliflower, lime and cilantro rice, sweet corn on the cob, and a watermelon/cantaloupe salad to cool the spicy cauliflower down a notch. The recipe is simple.
Recipe: Bang Bang Cauliflower
Ingredients:
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons sweet chili sauce
1 tablespoon Sriracha sauce
Juice of 1 lime
3 cloves minced garlic
1 medium cauliflower
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
Teaspoon chopped cilantro for garnish
That’s it!
Directions:
Set oven to 425 degrees F. Wisk the first five ingredients in a large mixing bowl and toss in cauliflower florets until well-coated. Spread the cauliflower (cut into florets) on a large baking sheet, season with salt and pepper, and roast for 30-35 minutes. Garnish with cilantro and serve.
As we savored the Bang Bang Cauliflower and reviewed the ingredients, a fascinating culinary and etymological journey ensued over the correct pronunciation of “Sriracha.” My personal introduction to this super spicy sauce was in the late 1960s when I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand—the country where the sauce originated. The Thai pronunciation “see-rotch-ah” comes from the Sanskrit honorific familiar in Sri Lanka and in the Thai language where the consonant cluster “sr” is pronounce “si.” But in grocery stores large and small across America, it is typically pronounced “see-RAH-cha.”
Sopa Thai lunch.
To our delight, restaurants in Nevada City offer dishes from vegan/vegetarian dishes to good old fashioned roadhouse comfort food and each restaurant has its own personal culinary history. When we first arrived and faced a mountain of cardboard boxes to be unpacked, we ordered take-out from “Sopa Thai Cuisine” and “One 11 Kitchen”—both located on Commercial Street where Nevada City’s former Chinese Quarter existed in the 1850s-1870s Gold Rush era. Their menus however reflect the personal culinary journey that brought the two restaurant owners/chefs to Nevada City. Sopa grew up in NW Thailand and Lior Rahmanian of One 11 Kitchen is from Iran.
More recently, we drove to The Willo, a classic California roadhouse on CA 49 a few miles beyond Nevada City’s downtown. We pass it when driving to our daughter’s home near the Yuba River and the parking lot is always full to overflowing. The menu features its award-winning signature choice of New York Steaks carefully aged and cut daily from Midwestern beef striploin. When our neighbors Carol and Jim invited us to join them for an evening at the Willo, we mutually agreed on a Friday evening when ribeye steaks are added to their menu.
Steaks on the grill at the Willo.
The history of the establishment’s evolution from “hut” to roadhouse goes back to 1947 when Bill Davis, a retired Naval Lt. Commander purchased a surplus WWII Quonset hut from the Navy. It was then moved to its present site on CA 49 where it opened as a popular watering hole for the local lumber and mining workforce. After being leased to Wilma Kenney in 1950, “Wilma’s Hut” sold sandwiches, hot lunches, beer, and soft drinks to logging truck drivers traveling up and down Hwy. 49. In 1969 it was leased to the owner of the Willo Bar in Grass Valley who relocated his tavern to the site, where hut and bar were combined. The Willo Steakhouse was born. Open seven days a week, dinners include house iceberg lettuce salad with choices of dressing, ranch beans, garlic bread, and a scoop of ice cream for dessert. Baked potatoes with butter and sour cream come as sides. Steaks are cooked to specification by each table’s waitress on a large open grill in the dining room and, boy howdy are they delicious!
Mural in the Classic Cafe on Broad St. in historic downtown Nevada City.
On Father’s Day, we had brunch on Nevada City’s historic Broad Street at the Classic Café—serving a French/American breakfast/lunch menu that ranges from traditional French crepes to eggs benedict, and even country biscuits and gravy. What’s cooking in Nevada City? We’ll let you know in the weeks and months ahead, one delicious dish/meal at a time.