Dining on Big Sur landscape

When people talk about dining in Big Sur, the first thing mentioned is usually the view, whether it's of spectacular sea cliffs, soaring redwoods, a pristine river or rugged mountains. But when John Cox, the new executive chef of Post Ranch Inn's Sierra Mar restaurant, surveys the landscape, he sees a menu in waiting, one with ingredients that take "locavorism" to a new level. He'll showcase some of those local flavors at next week's Big Sur Food and Wine Festival, when the Post Ranch Inn hosts an auction lunch, grand public tasting and — for guests only — a seven-course dinner prepared by Cox and David Kinch of Michelin-starred Manresa. But for those who can't make the festival — or afford the time and expense of a Sierra Mar dinner, much less a stay at the Post Ranch Inn ($675 a night and up) — it's good to know that Cox has also revamped the lunch menu. What was formerly "turkey sandwiches and burgers," in his words, is now an adventurous three-course prix fixe for $40, view included. "We're kind of like an amphitheater overlooking the coast, and the menu should reflect that" said Cox, a New Mexico native who got his start at Sierra Mar in 2001 and more recently worked at Casanova and La Bicyclette in Carmel. "It's always been a theatrical experience, with the floor-to-ceiling windows and raw metals; I wanted the food to not only support that but really play into the guest experience. If you're looking at the Big Sur coast, you should have ingredients that are sourced there." With that mind, I asked recently Cox to walk me through his current culinary inspirations found in and around Post Ranch, and came up with these eight representing land and sea. 1. Kelp "If you look straight down, you can see these giant kelp beds that run all the way up the coast, but they're most dense around Big Sur and Monterey because of the deep sea water," Cox said. "It's probably the most sustainable culinary resource because it grows so fast, but nobody uses it." Well, almost nobody — Cox said he likes using kelp leaves to make salads or smoke abalone, for example. "Giant kelp has one of highest amounts of glutamate of any natural food product, so it has that same characteristic of enhancing natural flavors" he observed. "It's almost perfectly balanced to cure fish. It really enhances the flavor of the product without taking anything anyway. At the festival's Grand Tasting Nov. 2, Cox's booth will serve Dungeness crab in a gel created with local kelp and the juice of pink pearl apples from a tree in his chef's garden, which will also provide the garnish of a borage blossom. He prizes the latter for its blue flower — a rarity among edible blossoms — and "light refreshing cucumber flavor." 2. Local roe "Indigenous caviar" is how Cox describes the roe of black cod, halibut and herring, all of which will be served in a trio dish in the exclusive Nov. 3 guests' dinner with Kinch. But he's most excited about komochi kombu, the Japanese phrase for blades of kelp loaded with giant herring eggs on them, which can weigh up to 70 pounds. "The Japanese like it for the sound that it makes when you eat, which is almost like pop rocks in your mouth," Cox said. It's highly prized, but almost all is exported to Japan from the Pacific coast, and I finally got my hands on one. What to do next was a question, though. "There's literally nothing online about how to prepare it," he said, but figured out that "you soak the eggs in a different procession of salt waters, and you make a stock to season the roe after four days of soaking. It's incredibly delicious." 3. Yucca blossoms "You would think that there wouldn't be that many ingredients in Big Sur because it's sort of a high desert, very dramatic, arid environment, but I found this yucca plant that was blossoming on my way into work," Cox said. The hard work of getting it down — a long pole and a serrated knife are handy — is worth it, though. "It only blossoms every four to 10 years," the chef noted. "I've only tried it once before, but they have almost this Belgian endive flavor, very refined." 4. Redwood strawberries For these compact berries, Cox just has to stroll to his chef's garden. They grow in the shade and, as their name suggests, they like redwood needles for mulch. "They come up and they're tiny, but they have this intense flavor that's almost too strong to be natural, like a watermelon Jolly Rancher." 5. Red crayfish These aren't native to Big Sur, which is why Cox is all the more compelled to serve ones caught in the pond below his restaurant. "They're a Louisiana species and we're trying to get rid of — they're eating the red-legged frogs that are part of the ecosystem here. I'm trying to cook them into extinction," he said with a laugh. 6. Bay laurel While most chefs use the Turkish European bay leaf, Cox has focused on putting the ranch's 1,000 California bay laurel trees to good use. "I did some research and found when you get the brand new leaves in the spring, they're very mild and you can use them like a bay leaf; the larger leaves you can grind up and use like a pepper," he said. But leaves aren't the only edible part. "Just last week they came out with this little yellow fruit, which is genetically similar to an avocado," Cox said. It has a really fatty silky texture, so it tastes like an avocado brushed with a bay leaf. In the inside there's a little nut that looks like an avocado seed. When you toast that, it gets this spicy, almost chocolate flavor, with just a little floral, spicy back to it. " 7. Wild boar In one preparation, Cox brines wild boar with the young bay leaves and a sauce with the bay fruit, and dusts toasted bay nuts over the top of the wild boar after roasting it. Technically, it's semi-wild boar: "I found a place in Carmel Valley that has cross-bred the native Big Sur wild boar with a Berkshire pig," he said, noting that buying it is not quite as simple as picking up pork chops in the supermarket. "You have to call (the owner) up and meet her at a USADA facility to get it processed. You're getting a whole wild boar that you then have to process, so it's really time consuming." 8. Sweet hay "The valley is filled with alfalfa and native grasses," Cox said. "When this was a working ranch, they would take the hay from the harvest season and use it to insulate the roasting meats; they also thought it would have purification properties when they put it with the ham." More recently, he's used the hay to flavor cipollini onions from the chef's garden. "I soaked them in salt water, covered them in hay and set it on fire, so the onions were smoldered and they had this sweet, smoky flavor." But every chef has to draw the line somewhere. For Cox, that might be ant salad. "I was collecting a lot of miner's lettuce and found that the way the Native Americans in this area would prepare it was to leave it outside of red ant hills, who would cross over it for days and leave little trails of formic acid. The Native Americans would then eat the miner's lettuce with this acid dressing," he recounted. "It sounds really cool, but I'm not sure I'm ready to try it for the menu."