Enjoy worldly flavors at North Coast Wine & Food Festival

The North Coast Wine & Food Festival at the SOMO Village on June 9 will take guests' tastebuds on a global trek - from Mexico and the Middle East to North Africa and Asia - as nearly two dozen local chefs and purveyors serve up bites inspired by world cuisines and the pristine ingredients of the North Bay.

Sourcing local treasures such as Dungeness Crab and Miyagi oysters from the coast and Liberty Duck and fresh strawberries from the farms, the chefs will showcase their land-to-sea fare alongside 75 wineries that garnered gold medals and other top awards in the 2018 North Coast Wine Challenge competition. Among the wines being poured will be Best of the Best: the Kokomo 2016 Pinot Noir Gopher Hills Block Peters Vineyard Sonoma Coast, a seamless wine that scored a record-breaking 100 points.

While the wines will range from sparkling and rosé to exotic varietals and trendy red blends, the bites will include delicious creations such as Barrel Smoked Pork Agnolotti with Wild Mushroom Velouté from the Dry Creek Kitchen in Healdsburg and Bloomsdale Spinach Ohitashi with Goma-ae, Maitake, Sprouted Grains and Silken Tofu from Ramen Gaijin of Sebastopol.

Celebrity Chef John Ash, a renowned cookbook author and cooking instructor, will demonstrate how to make Spring Rolls with the help of the young chefs from the Ceres Community Project.

Like the competition itself, now in its sixth year, the festival has grown over the years, with the roster of chefs tripling to include many of the most innovative and interesting chefs working in Sonoma County today.

Liza Hinman of The Spinster Sisters in Santa Rosa, who was named to the James Beard Foundation's Women's Entrepreneurial Leadership Program in 2017, has been participating in the wine and food festival since its inception.

“The first year, there were about eight of us, and now there are 22,” she said. “It's nice to spend time with your peers and also with the wineries, to see what everyone is really excited about.”

In the past, Hinman has done Tunisian Lamb Meatball Sliders, but this year she knew she wanted to highlight a vegetable rather than a protein. She plans to make a complex and flavorful Harissa Roasted Carrot Salad with farro, whipped lemon tahini, pistachio dukkah and grilled flatbread.

“A lot of my farmers have a beautiful new crop of carrots in early June,” she said. “North African and Middle Eastern flavors work really well with vegetables ... they can bring out a meatiness to the vegetables and make it a little more rich and satisfying.”

Liza, who used to make a similar carrot salad at the former Santi in Geyserville, showcases the root veggies three ways: coated with harissa spices and roasted, then pureed and cooked down like a jam, for the base of the salad; whole, roasted carrots; and fresh shaved carrots. The salad will be sprinkled with toasted farro that's been dressed with tahini, then finished with a Middle Eastern touch of pistachio dukkah and some grilled flatbread.

“I really gravitate toward the savory and sweet in Moroccan food,” she said. “I think it works nicely with both red and white wines, which is nice at an event like this ... it's nice to have something versatile.”

For his bite, Chef Mike Mullins of Perch and Plow in Santa Rosa also will build up several layers of flavors and blend them together like a fine wine.

For his grilled octopus with salsa verde, the graduate of the Culinary Institute of America will lay down a base of chickpea puree made from a mirepoix and spiked with a blend of chile powder, pimento peppers and tomatoes.

“It's smoky spicy, not hot spicy,” he said of the dish. “I would eat it with a rosé or a bubbly ...real men drink pink wine.”

To tenderize the octopus, Mullins uses the ancient technique of confit - cooking slowly in olive oil - to break down the muscle.

“If you look at the history of octopus and how it's been cooked in the Mediterranean ... it's tenderized by throwing it against a rock, and then they cook it in clay pots at a low temperature,” he said. “I cook it low and slow with garlic, rosemary and bay leaf.”

Then he sears it over a griddle while basting it in clarified butter, which brings out the sugars and the umami flavor. At the festival, he plans to finish it with a salsa verde made from preserved capers, oregano and shallots, plus a sprinkle of arugula and pickled onions.

“This is a very Italian presentation,” he said of the dish, which is served as a small plate on the restaurant's menu ($12) with a fennel pesto and onion flower.

For the vegetarians at the festival, Mullins will cook up some charred snap peas with a crunchy topping of black garlic and togarashi, as a twist on the popular Japanese appetizer, edamame.

A native of Kenwood who has cooked all over the North Bay, including Cavallo Point in Sausalito, Mullins will be the new kid on the block at the wine and food festival. Perch and Plow, located in the former Christie's on the Square location, only opened in early February.

“I interviewed 100 chefs, and then a local guy with a lot of passion fell into our lap,” said Jhaun Devere, general manager for Perch and Plow.

Before he was hired, Mullins was planning a trip to Thailand to check out job possibilities, but he decided to stay in Santa Rosa after the trauma of the wildfires.

“That was life-changing,” said the 37-year-old, who helped get his parents out of Kenwood. “After the fires, I really wanted to stick around and create something.”

Like the cuisine at the festival, Mullins said his cooking style is globally inspired, with no borders or limits.

“If you look at the (restaurant) space and the design, there's not a box we put ourselves into,” he said. “We source really good ingredients through good people ... and we try to keep the integrity. We really want the flavor to come out.”

A portion of the proceeds from the festival will go to the Ceres Project, which helps create health for people and communities through healing food and empowering the next generation of chefs. That's something that Mullins, and the rest of the chefs, can really get behind.

“It's super cool that they have an eclectic array of chefs,” he said. “And it's for a good cause.”

Staff Writer Diane Peterson can be reached at 707-521-5287 or diane.peterson@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @dianepete56.