06.24.08
Posted in Reviews, Other Fun at 8:59 am by Chef Matt
Last “weekend” (which is Monday-Tuesday for me) my parents finally cashed in on their Christmas present that my wife and I gave them. A nice day touring through Virginia to see some of the best wineries my home state has to offer. It’s long been one of my favorite ways to spend a day, and I figured why not share the fun with my parents as well?
My lovely wife, Caroline, was our designated driver - which makes sense seeing as how she doesn’t drink - and in return we took her to two of her favorite spots along the way. So what follows is a quick (completely unsolicited) review of the wineries and other spots we hit along the way, just so you know what to do if you ever find yourself traveling in this area. (Wow, I feel like Duncan Hines…)
First stop was a relatively new winery on the VA scene, Pearmund Cellars. Their selection was large, and the staff was welcoming and friendly. The wines were generally good with a slightly too acidic Sauvignon Blanc, a nice reserve Chardonnay, and a very interesting “Vin de Sol” which actually ages on the roof of the winery in the sun for two years before bottling and comes out like a sherry. I have been several times before, and I’m sure I will be back again.
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For the next haul, we drove down to a winery I have been past, but never in before, Burnley Vineyards. We were greeted by a very large dog as we walked in, and needless to say the smell of dog permeated everything we tried to enjoy about the wines. What a change in attitude this was for us as the lady pouring for us acted as if she couldn’t stand the fact that we were there to taste her wines! Add to that the fact that almost all of them were undrinkable, and well, we left there about as fast as was possible. In all fairness, the Rivanna White was quite nice, with a crisp front and dry finish that was enjoyable enough that we bought a bottle despite our other instincts.
If you can find a better bagel, tell me. |
Driving into Charlottesville, we stopped off at the first destination for my wife, Bodo’s Bagels. For those of you who are not alums of UVA, you might not know this secret, but these are the best bagels south of the Mason-Dixon Line, bar none. I have been to New York several times. I’ve had good bagels, I’ve had bad bagels, and I’ve had downright horrible bagels. Heck, I’ve ever tired to make bagels on a few occasions. These are the best I’ve ever had without a doubt. So even though we made it seem like a present for Caroline, who loves them as well, it was a fine break for all of us as well.
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Keswick Vineyards was the next stop on our tour and we were thrilled to once again be greeted by pleasant staff in the setting of a lovely tasting room and garden. A neat feature of this winery was how they had a wine that was called “Consensus” which was put together by the members of their own wine club. While this is a really cool feature that would make me want to be a part of that club, the wine itself tasted like something only a committee could come up with: uninspired and boring. The rest of the wines were nice, but a tad overpriced for their level of quality. I did however buy myself a waiter’s corkscrew there, as I have needed one at work for some time now since my last one broke.
Since I can’t find an image of their logo online, here is a picture of their cool main building - complete with turret! |
Through a rough rainstorm we proceeded on to a personal favorite winery of mine: Horton Vineyards. They have a Viognier (the 2006) that I feel is the best Viognier ever produced by any Virginia vineyard to date. (And I’ve been drinking them for quite a while now.) But that’s not all, as they had a remarkable Vidal Blanc, and their Stonecastle White was an incredible bargain at only $10/bottle. Throw in the fact that tastings are free, and this is a winery I always try to visit when I’m in the area. Just beware that they have so many wines to try, you’ll need a designated driver just after visiting this one alone! However, with the wide range of selection, incredible quality and fabulous values to their wines, I’m personally willing to dub Horton with the title: Best Winery in Virginia.
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Practically across the street from Horton (which is about all we could stumble at this point) is Barboursville Vineyard. A lovely vineyard with friendly staff and (I’ve heard) a wonderful restaurant, this vineyard is one of the most awarded in all of Virginia. Unfortunately, they are letting the awards go to their heads (like the likewise fabulous Chrysalis Vineyards in Middleburg, VA) and they are pricing their wines way too high as a result. Their whites are very good, their reds are mediocre. But to look at the price tag, you’d think you were buying Chateau Neuf de Pape. While always worth a visit, I rarely find their wines worth the price, so again I left without buying anything.
It was time to call it a day for us, but we couldn’t help but be thankful to Caroline for driving for us, so we took the lovely route 20 all the way to Fredericksburg where were stopped in at the best coffee shop in Virginia, Hyperion Espresso. Unlike the unpalatable burnt flavor that accompanies every cup of coffee in a Starbuck’s, Hyperion’s coffee is rich, smooth and well-crafted. I’ve never had anything short of an excellent cup of coffee there, and today was no exception.
So there you have it, a wide range of fun stops in Virginia’s heartland that will get you drunk, full and buzzed all in an afternoon! If you can tell me a better way to spend my day off, and to have fun with my family while doing it, I’d love to hear it!
Chef Matt
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06.17.08
Posted in Reviews, Other Fun at 10:43 am by Chef Matt
Walking into Grape & Bean on a night where it seemed as if the sky could unleash a summer evening shower at any moment, I was greeted with trays of the most unusual fare for a party. Lemon and lime wedges, under-ripe rhubarb, salt and vinegar potato chips and unsweetened cranberry juice were lined up on the counter for the enjoyment of the guests.
Not my idea of good party snacks. |
Any other night, and I probably would have had a few chips (love that flavor!) and excused myself quickly in search of a party that at least maybe offered something a tad more palatable. But in this instance, I dove right in to all these incredibly mouth-puckering foods since it was important for me to have a frame of reference.
Perhaps you need some reference as well at this point…
See, this was no ordinary social gathering. This was a “miracle fruit” tasting. This fruit, which is really called “miracle fruit” is a West African fruit that, when eaten, re-wires how your brain interprets sour flavors rendering them sweet for the next half hour or so. Supposedly you can eat lemons, drink black coffee, even shoot straight vinegar, and not notice the incredible sour/bitter flavors that normally accompany those foods.
Miracle fruits on the tree. They’re about the size of a large coffee bean. |
I had recently heard about this fruit from my good friend Mike who sent me the New York Times article all about this fruit, and in a coincidence worthy of the Celestine Prophecy, I was invited to this party for the little fruit just one week later.
So back to the frame of reference. Having tried all these incredibly tart foods, we all were given a single miracle fruit and were told to chew it up and let it sit in our mouth for about a minute. The fruit itself is actually quite bitter and had an alum-like effect that robbed my mouth of all saliva for a moment. But once the fruit was down, there seemed to be no residual unpleasant taste in my mouth. It seemed hard to believe that this would have any effect on these foods in front of me.
But with the first sip of coffee, I was a believer. The coffee’s strong flavors were instantly mellowed out making it smooth and sweet. As if I had added cream and sugar, but it was still black as tar. The lemons tasted like Country Time lemonade; the rhubarb was as sweet as the best of springtime pies, and the raspberries - which were already sweet to begin with - now tasted like cloyingly sweet candy. The truly amazing change were the salt and vinegar potato chips. My brain could smell the artificial vinegar smell and my mouth was prepared for the intense rush of sourness as a result. But the chip was sweet and salty instead - as if they had miraculously become sweet potato chips instead. It was hard to wrap my mind around the concept of what things should be tasting like, as compared to what was actually going on in my mouth.
Wanting the full experience, I decided to chug a shot of straight apple cider vinegar. This would indeed be the real “acid test”. It was only slightly harsh, but the overall taste was more similar to apple cider than what I would have expected if I drank straight vinegar at any other time.
If this fruit is so amazing, how come we haven’t heard of it before? Actually, the miracle fruit has been known to the Western world since the 1800’s, but back in the 1970’s, the FDA decided that the miracle fruit was unsafe as a food additive. (Was this political wrangling by the sugar lobby? Who knows?…) But the whole fruit has remained legal, and primarily grown in Florida here in the US. But getting your hands on them is difficult and relatively expensive.
“U-P-Y-O-U-R-S…. What a rude Ouija Board!” |
Is it a life-changing experience? No, not really. The effect wears off after about half an hour, and fortunately, the effects abate themselves slowly. (It would be a nasty wake-up call to suddenly down a shot of vinegar and realize you had lost your super-powers…) However, if you ever have the means, I totally recommend it as a fun way to spend an evening with some friends. Like the first time you use a Ouija Board, it is a curious oddity that is fun in a unique way. But then you go back to enjoying salt and vinegar potato chips the way they were meant to be had - in all their salty-sour glory.
Chef Matt
P.S. A word of warning though… After eating large quantities of nothing but sour (acidic) foods for half an hour without noticing it, the result on your stomach is predictably upsetting. Better have some milk, or some Tums on hand for afterwards.
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06.12.08
Posted in Recipes at 10:07 pm by Chef Matt
A classic of Italian cooking, Linguine alle Vongole is one of those dishes that is not only sublime in its natural ocean flavors, but is so simple to prepare, you’d almost have to wonder why you don’t make it every day. Perhaps because so many recipes for this are full of flour and gumminess that are just completely inedible. Well, once you have this simple step-by-step approach, you’ll have a simple recipe that is clean, fresh and delicious, and one you’ll be able to make whenever you want.
Let’s get started. You’ll need the following all ready to go (since this all comes together fast):
click any of these photos to enlarge |
- 15 (or so) littleneck clams - scrubbed clean
- 2 Tbsp rough chopped basil
- 1 1/2 Tbsp chopped garlic
- 1/4 cup chopped tomatoes
- 2 Tbsp Olive Oil
- Generous plash of white wine
- Kosher salt
- dash of red pepper flakes (not pictured)
- 4 oz linguine or other long pasta (I’m using squid ink spaghetti since squid ink pasta goes so well with seafood dishes.)
Oil and garlic - the base for all good cooking. |
Of course you’ll want to start a pot of salted water boiling for the pasta. In fact, if you have the pasta water boiling, and the pan and oil for the clams heated, you can pretty much cook both simultaneously in the same amount of time. So drop the pasta into the water, and throw the garlic in the pan. (If it’s not sizzling on contact, your pan is not hot enough…)
Of course, if you just dump all the pasta and boiling water all over the measuring cup, you’re on your own… |
One ingredient you may need later on in the recipe is some of the pasta water. If the pasta is too dry and needs more sauce, this is how you are going to add it. But I often have the problem that I drain the pasta, sending all the pasta water down the drain and then remember I needed some of the water. Here is my trick to remember how to save some. When you put your colander in the sink for the pasta, place a measuring cup in it. When the magic time comes to drain the pasta, you’ll remember to scoop out a cup for yourself - which I promise is more than enough.
I always carefully measure when I add booze to food. |
Once the garlic has a little color to it, you pretty much just want to throw everything else in. Tomatoes, clams, basil, red pepper, and a big old splash of white wine. Give the pan a few shakes to mix everything together, and then slap a cover on it. The wine will start to boil, and the steam will make the clams pop open to reveal their lovely meat inside.
All I did was throw it all in a pan, and it looks like this good that fast… |
When steam is coming out from the side of the lid, you’re probably pretty close to where you need to be. Take of the lid and take a peek. If the clams are ALL open, then keep the lid off. If only some are open, put the lid back on and keep cooking. Of course if all the other clams are open and one is just refusing to budge, then it probably is a bad clam, and should be discarded.
Remember, if they aren’t open by now, you don’t want to eat them. |
Take the clams out of the pan and place them in a separate bowl. The easiest way to do this is to use tongs. Grip them by placing one of the tongs inside the clam, and grip one of the two shells. Then be sure to tip the clam to drain all the natural juice out of the clam and into the sauce. When all of the clams are out, the pasta should be just about done. (You’ve been keeping a close eye on it, right?…) Save some of the liquid, and drain the pasta in your colander.
This is where the magic happens. Add the pasta to the pan with the clam sauce. See, the pasta (assuming you didn’t rinse it, which you should NEVER do) is coated with starch that is just dying to absorb some kind of sauce. So the pasta slides into the pan, grabs all this wonderfully reducing sauce, and with just a few tosses, it’s ready to go. If the sauce is too wet, cook it down a little more, if it’s too dry, this is where that pasta water will come in handy.
Place the pasta on a large plate, and top with all the open clams. And be sure to pour any juices in the bowl with clams over the pasta. That stuff is pure flavor, so don’t waste it! Serve with the same white wine you cooked with, and you have a meal that you’ve thrown together in less than 10 minutes, and yet could be served to the finest company.
Enjoy.
Yeah, this is the kind of lunch I have on my day off… |
Chef Matt
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06.10.08
Posted in Other Fun at 1:09 pm by Chef Matt
It seems like a fair deal to me. And it seems like a fair deal to my uncle as well. I think that’s the cornerstone of all good deals. Each side thinks that they’re cheating the other.
I honestly have no idea what these forms are for. Yet I feel that’s a good thing… |
Every year, my uncle does my taxes for me. I collect a folder full of documents that I feel are possibly important and hand them to him in no particular order. A few weeks later, he has a series of documents that look like tax forms that I’m told to sign and mail off. The IRS then sends off the refund check, and I sit back with some cold ones and wonder why people think tax time is such a pain.
However, the flip side of this deal is that I have to prepare a gourmet meal for my uncle in return for this service. No problem! It just so happens that I both enjoy cooking, and I happen to be pretty good at it. So while it may seem a bit like a busman’s holiday for me to spend a whole day cooking, when in fact I’m supposed to be recovering from cooking, I see it as an easy and enjoyable payment for avoiding what most people consider to be one of the most dreadful citizenly duty.
But in the interest of full disclosure, my uncle is in fact an accountant, and helps lots of people with their taxes, so it’s not that much more of a stretch for him to do one more set of 1040’s. Or W2’s… or whatever those things are…
Before the wine, and more in focus… |
Seeing as how this is a food blog though, and not a discussion of the merits of our system of taxation (we’ll get plenty of that later on seeing as how this is an election year), I’ll now go into a description of what I made for my uncle yesterday, seeing as how I spent all day yesterday making his special meal.
The opening course, a sort of amuse bouche, was clams poached in coriander, pepper and bay topped with prosciutto, corn salsa and basil. It was simple, clean and bursting with all sorts of complimentary flavors. And I have to say, it looked pretty cute on the plate as well.
The wine is flowing, and my ability to focus is going… |
The main course consisted of three dishes:
- Lamb chops with a salt and lavender crust
- Roasted red pepper, caramelized onion and goat cheese tart
- Asparagus with two sauces - Romesco and Bearnaise
This whole course was just superb as each of the pieces worked well on their own, and with each other. Yes, the tart shells were homemade, which is a rare thing for me since my pastry work has never been my strength. And yes, the bearnaise was a little thin, but it sat for a tad too long while we were enjoying the first course and each other’s company. (At least it didn’t break…)
Yet more wine, and I flat out forget to take a photo… |
And for dessert, the perfect end to a hot summer’s day, a red wine granita layered with fresh oranges and ruby red grapefruit. It was served in a tall pilsner glass so the fruit layering could be seen, and the rich red color of the granite could be enjoyed by all the diners. You’ll have to take my word for it, it was beautiful, delicious and wonderfully refreshing given how hot it is outside right now.
So I pose this question to you all, my readers:
Now please don’t vote based on what you think of this meal in particular. I don’t serve the same thing every year. In fact, I always present him with new recipes I’ve come up with rather than play it safe. So there is an element of chance involved seeing as how I don’t know how it’s going to turn out myself. But I just want to know who is getting the raw end of this deal.
Though I do already know who the real winner is: My wife. She gets her taxes done, and enjoys a meal with no work. Damn she’s lucky!
Chef Matt
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06.09.08
Posted in The Story at 8:05 am by Chef Matt
As the seasons change, we have to change how we rethink the menu. I’ve of course mentioned this before. We like to keep the same mix of items on the menu though, we just like to use them in different ways. For example, our grilled tuna salad has now become a light, cool tuna tartare that is perfectly adapted to a summer menu. (Served with diced tomatoes and cucumbers, topped with a pickled corn whipped cream and served with plantain chips, it is awesome!)
Another dish we need to rework for the summer months is our chicken. Last summer, we served a fried chicken that was a breast we cut off a whole chicken, butterflied, stuffed with herbs and butter, rolled up, poached, unwrapped, then breaded and fried to order. It was a fabulous dish, but a ton of work. For the winter, we served a brick chicken that was oven roasted with a wonderfully crispy skin. With summer returning, Chef wanted to bring fried chicken back onto the menu, but in a format that would require less work beforehand.
In case you need to see what my fried chicken looks like again… |
Recalling his days at another restaurant, Chef was reminded of a fried chicken he did that soaked overnight in buttermilk. He said the resulting dish when this chicken was fried was remarkable. I was standing on the other side of the room, but at this comment, my ears pricked up. Some of you may remember that I posted a recipe for awesome fried chicken whose secret was a buttermilk brine. I developed it while in culinary school, and it was named “Slap My Momma Fried Chicken” by one of my fellow students.
I went over to Chef and asked him about his chicken recipe - was it a buttermilk brine, or just buttermilk. He said it was just buttermilk, and so I gave him a brief description of my version which involves making a brine. He was a tad skeptical at first, but he didn’t say no, and when it came time to butcher up the first batch of chickens for the new fried chicken, well, that was my job, so I whipped up a batch of my brine and let them soak away in it.
Hmm… having a photo of Pepto Bismol in a post talking about my cooking… maybe not such a good idea. |
The thing is, my brine recipe has paprika and cayenne in it for a little flavor, which naturally turns the buttermilk pink. Chef was the one on station for the inaugural night of sending this fried chicken out to the public. He opened the container of brining breasts, and I was sure to watch his face as he did it. Yes, the mild shock he must have felt at opening a case of chicken breasts that appeared to be soaking in Pepto Bismol and crushed garlic was hard for him to hide.
But he went forward with it nonetheless, and the results turned out really great. I should point out that his method for applying the final coating to the chickens differs from mine, and since that’s his recipe, I’m not going to share it here.
The real redemption came the next night though as another sous chef was working the line and he was impressed with what an amazingly tender chicken was coming out of the fryer as a result of this brining. Chef acknowledged that the tenderness was awesome, and he looked at me and said, “You have the recipe for this brine, right?…”
“Of course I do, Chef!” I said with a smile.
Of course, I think he meant I had written it down for them, which I haven’t as of yet. But hey, all they have to do is read my blog, right?…
Chef Matt
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06.03.08
Posted in The Story at 10:21 am by Chef Matt
I guess I knew what I was getting into. There were plenty of warnings that being a chef would be a hard, tiring job. Heck, several people tried to warn me away from becoming a chef if only because it is such an incredible increase in effort. But I ignored those people since I was raised in a family that was always willing to let me know what I wanted to do with my life. While growing up, the most common phrase I heard when I thought up a new career choice (which admittedly was often) was “Oh, you don’t want to do that…” As a result of this indoctrination, I rarely listen to people’s advice on career decisions since that would only keep me from trying out new things.
“And as we can see from your career profile aptitude test, you are best suited to be a priest, stand-up comic or lumberjack. Good luck with that.” |
Once again, it is only fair that I point out that my family was 100% supportive of my decision to become a chef. At no point did they try to dissuade me from this path. (Which was a welcome surprise…)
I have mentioned before how it is challenging to “pull a six” in any given week when what you are used to is a five day work week. Well, these past two weeks I not only had to pull two sixes back to back, but within this stretch, I had to pull multiple doubles as well. The reason for all this? I was filling in for a fellow sous chef who was taking his vacation in Japan - his first trip out of the country.
At the risk of sounding hubristic, I’ve become pretty good at my job. (I should hope so, seeing as how I’ve been doing it for over a year now.) So I’m usually able to finish up after just 11 hours on a usual day. (If that makes you shudder, then being a chef is not for you…) So an average work week is about 55 hours for me.
These past two weeks though, working six days each with several 13-14 hour days involved, I’ve figured that I worked a total of 148 hours. Back in the world of cubicles, it would usually take me 19 work days to work that many hours. But since I always had 5 day work weeks back then, 19 work days would be spread out over 25 calendar days. This stretch was 12 work days spread out over just 13 calendar days. The same amount of work in almost exactly half as many days.
To say I’m working twice as hard now that I’m a chef isn’t much of an exaggeration.
How could he not have a good time? He was away from work, and got to eat lots of sushi! |
So all that is a way of me saying two things:
- I’m sorry I haven’t posted in a while - I’ve been busy.
- Man, I’m tired.
But the real payoff came when my fellow sous chef returned from his trip on Sunday. He had an awesome time and was ready to get back to work!
Made all my effort to cover for him seem worthwhile.
Chef Matt
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