Andrew Mark Veety

Dinner With Yellow Tree Farm - Sorrel Salad With Red Buds

And as Mr. Grey Wolf neared and snarled
in those far-away woods 'neath an oak tree gnarled
And grown with ivy, yet standing there
And raising its head in the glad sweet air,
Then came that strangest of things to see -
(Far out of the ken of you or of me)
For Riding Hood changed all at once to the tree
That now we call Red Bud.

Kate Stephens 1911

The nutty nature of early spring red bud flowers gives way to a pleasant, almost citrus fruit acidity in this simple salad of French sorrel and flowers. Garnish with shavings of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese and a dressing of extra virgin olive oil and white wine vinegar infused with minced -- or better yet -- lightly toasted slices of garlic.

About this post

Yellow Tree Farm is a family owned, biointensive, urban homestead located in St. Louis, Missouri. The farm provides produce to some of the finest restaurants in town, runs a local CSA and is a vendor at the Maplewood Farmers Market. I am a proud member of the Yellow Tree Farm CSA. This post is part of a planned a series highlighting the fine ingredients that come in their weekly delivery.

Yellow Tree Farm has been an advertiser on this site since January 2011.

Burger Of The Month - Newstead Tower Public House/Five Bistro

For the tenth time this year I gathered up a group of friends and food bloggers to take down a burger on a perfect fall night. This was the next stop in a year long search for the best burger that St. Louis has to offer, based on the input of my readers. You nominated them and I'm eating them, one by one until I crown the best burger in St. Louis this coming December.

Joining me this go around were Church of Burger alumni Bill Burge (STLBites), Kelli Best-Oliver (South City Confidential / Food Blog Mafia), Stefani Pollack (Cupcake Project), project photographer Jonathan Pollack (J. Pollack Photography), Stephanie Tolle (Iron Stef /Food Blog Mafia), Kyle Harsha (Sippin' Saint Louis / Harsha Wines) and first timer Michael Sweeney (STLHops).

With the introductions out of the way its time to welcome you all back to The Church of Burger. In the name of the bun, the toppings and the holy burger, I present unto you the October Burger of the Month from the Newstead Tower Public House and Five Bistro.

Some Thoughts On "The Locavore's Dilemma"

Earlier this week St. Louis Magazine food critic Dave Lowry posted an essay entitled The Locavore's Dilemma: One Critic's Take. 

I encourage you to take the time to read Dave's piece and give it some thought. I know I did. What follows is a copy of the comment I left for the author. As always I would be interested to know what the readers of this blog think about this subject. I hope to read your thoughts -- either here or on the Relish section of St. Louis Magazine.

I commented:

The type of eater that Dave describes accounts for 1 or 2 of every 100 people who take an active role in the relationship between themselves and the food they eat. It's not clear if Dave intended to use his well crafted prose to spray entrails over a larger segment of the dining population with his essay -- but to this reader that is exactly what has happened.

While I am not a locavore, I feel the need to point out that Dave has targeted the low hanging -- and I assume local -- fruit to base his attack on. I will grant to the author that the locavore is an easy target. Indeed most ideas can be dismantled when they are pushed to their extremes, especially if you can paint the individuals who adhere to that idea as disingenuous, woefully bored and haplessly middle class. The locavore becomes a buffoonish cartoon under Dave's withering attack -- the author skillfully uses dripping sarcasm and absurdity to make his prey look absurd.

Missing from Dave's argument are harder targets -- namely the real social and political concerns associated with the local food movement. The issues of national farm, energy and health polices are real -- conceding these issues and arguments even in part to the locavore makes it harder to diminish them as a group.

Sadly Dave's argument is additionally weakened by a secondary theme that appears throughout his essay -- namely a sense of entitlement and arrogance associated with being an accomplished eater. Without specifically saying it, the locavore is regulated to the same group as the often maligned foodie. To many, the term foodie is an affectionate term, used to describe the fraternity of eaters. The darker side of the term foodie is an insult - a method for the experienced to point out the amateur status of another. If one can stratify eaters, one can maintain one's position at the top of the dining heap.

It would appear that there is not a single idea or lesson that can be learned from the locavore. The bounty of edible treats available to the culinary adventurous is here for our enjoyment, we need not worry ourselves with issues like our relationship to the food on our plate. To listen to the incessant ranting of the locavore is to harsh the eaters proverbial buzz. Please do not trouble me with your thoughts, be quiet and pass me the duck liver.

In the end, Dave comes off as angry and aggravated that an unwashed plebeian questioned the choices of the patrician. Personally I find it entertaining that the author appears so threatened by the opinions and ideas of such a small population of eaters that he is willing to use a literary daisy cutter to decimate them.

Shhhh...There Is A Monster At The End of This Post....

One would think that life would be pretty easy for a puppet once they achieve Muppet status -- the limos, dressing rooms and the best felt and fur replacement parts that money can buy. However it seems that most Muppets do double duty to earn some extra scratch. Doozers do construction, Miss Piggy has shilled for Pizza Hut and lovable furry old Grover has spent years toiling in the kitchens and dining rooms of Sesame Street.

In this clip from 1989, Grover patiently tries to explain the difference between fast and slow food to a frustrated Mr. Johnson.

Big Business to Foodies "Your Revolution Will Be Homogenized"

FULL DISCLOSURE: I understand how it looks when I begin to write about the kinds and quality of food that American's eat. One only has to look through the pages of this site to understand that I can make some terrible (yet immensely delicious) food choices from time to time. However in the end, they are exactly that. They are my choices. 

The posts that appear in this site are not really an accurate reflection of how my family eats from day to day. We make an effort to limit how much meat we consume - opting for dishes that are based in vegetarian cooking most nights of the week. We try to grow our own food during the summer. We shop organic and the edges of the supermarket when we can, putting our money where our beliefs are because we are lucky enough to be able to. We quietly donate to Slow Food and have our obligatory copies of "The Omnivore's Dilemma" and "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" on our shelves. We share what we've learned, what we've read and what we are eating with others, but in the end our choices are for us, not for everyone.

Because we have been a bit outside of the target market for food marketing for some time, I've become sensitive to the instances when my individual food choices are explicitly being appealed to. I am not naive enough to think that America's developing "real food" movement will somehow escape being taken over in part by the large corporations that dominate our food landscape. After all, its in the interest of these companies to keep us bellying up to the counter and ordering their food. These companies have changed in the past to survive and they will change again should a critical mass vote with their feet and wallets for a better set of choices. In fact, we might be seeing that very thing happen right now.

There is a reason why Chipotle Mexican Grill has been marching across the country opening up shops in its wake, they are meeting a growing demand for food that not only tastes good, but food that has a sense of social conscious. This is not to suggest that the food at Chipotle is any better for you -- their gigantic foil wrapped burritos can come close to 1000 calories per serving. However in a world of limited real food choices they have created a business model that makes it easier for me to chose them over their competition.

As a company Chipotle is not perfect or without its critics, however on the whole it its attempting to address how a growing population wants to eat and has internalized the basics of that desire into its culture. This attention to detail goes beyond the dressing of a plate to actively participating in how its meat is raised and sourced and how its buildings are constructed -- the goal being to reduce the overall impact that fast and convenience foods place on our environment. It would appear that the idea of "real and sustainable food" is in the corporate DNA of Chipotle. If they can turn a profit in the process so much the better.

It would seem that its easier to look at the market and design a business to meet a growing need than to implement change into an existing structure. This is especially true when many of the issues associated with that existing business model are caused by a dominate position in the market. It would be hard to argue for a system of factory farming and feed lots if there was not massive demand for cheap products by multinational fast food companies and the millions who rely upon them for a large share of their daily calories. The machine that feeds into this maw has been invested in, built up and improved over time to be lethally efficient and profitable, thereby making actual change that much harder.

If a business model is built on top of these ideas (efficiency, convenience and perceived affordability) how is it changed and adapted to an evolving demographic without tearing down a corporate structure or venturing out to build a net new one? It would seem small incremental changes over time and the age old tactic of co-opting a message is the answer.

Case in point -- a new line of salads from Wendy's which are "real" and designed to appeal to "foodies" and "people who care about ingredients and what they eat." On the surface this is an example of extending an existing marketing campaign, where the term "real" is assigned to their existing product offerings to differentiate themselves from their competition and counter the McDonald's "What We Are Made Of" strategy. These marketing concepts exist because of the growing consensus that the products served at fast food counters are not real food -- they are foodlike things designed by food scientists, psychologists and test groups to appeal to our base instincts -- namely the consumption of massive quantities of fat, salt and the sweetness that is sugar.

The Wendy's/Arby's Group recently announced that they "teamed up with salad dressing maker Marzetti's to create new flavors such as avocado ranch and pomegranate vinaigrette. It's using multiple types of greens beyond iceberg lettuce, such as spinach, red and green chard, and red and green romaine. Wendy's signature chili is an ingredient in the Baja salad, which features Hass avocados and pico de gallo."

Obviously these new choices sound great and are a step away from the double and triple stacked burgers they are known for. However, according to Wendy's, while these new salads are "real", they may not be real good for you compared to their normal menu when you look at their 580-730 calories, massive doses of salt and up to 33 grams of fat per serving. 

I will readily admit that the Big Bacon Classic (long since removed from the Wendy's menu and replaced by the entertainingly named "Baconator") just may be my favorite fast food burger ever - so what's my beef with Wendy's? Truth be told it's not with the welcome menu changes but its the words that Wendy's chooses to use. Words like "foodie" and "real food". These are words that have a lifestyle and culture associated with them. In many ways they evolved in direct opposition to the concept of fast food, yet here they are being used in support of it.

By assigning the term "real food" to their new line of salads, is it suggested that the rest of the Wendy's menu is the opposite of "real food"? While it can be argued that they are just words, to the market Wendy's is targeting the idea of "foodies" and "real food" suggests more than a salad mix or new dressings. When used by Wendy's, the idea of "real food" creates more questions for the educated diner than actually describing what they are serving. It is empty marketing gibberish. 

Matching "real food" within the context of the Wendy's menu means going beyond adding kale and avocado to a salad. It means establishing a connection between food, plate and person. It requires on some level that the real person eating this real food understands where it came from and how it was grown. It shows a respect for your customer to explain why you are using terms that have a specific meaning to them. Using these terms as a marketing ploy comes off more like an attempt to turn yet another market upside down so as to shake a few more dollars out of its untapped pockets.

Sadly Wendy's had a real chance to differentiate itself from its competition by assuming the mantle of "real food". While it may not have solved the problem of cheap calories and factory farming in the United States with its new salads, it could have taken a step towards addressing it. It is that component of "real food" that seems to be missing from its marketing materials and investor relations propaganda. As I searched for information to counter this thought it dawned on me -- why would Wendy's attempt to change a system that has been so successful for so long? Its just not in their best interests after billions spent on science, technology and marketing. Better to bend the market to you, no? Or maybe its as simple as its not yet in their best interests as long as enough of us continue to not vote with our feet and wallets -- bringing us back to the choices we make.

Yes, it is a fine thing to have additional choices at Wendy's as we all would do well to choose a salad over a burger from time to time. I can find no fault in catering to changing tastes and the idea that eating healthy is a good thing to do. I can't even bring myself to find fault in the basic pursuit of profit. No, I worry that instead of changing a culture created of its own doing it seems more expedient to glom onto a phrase and dilute it until it is all but meaningless to the vast majority of people.

With the progress made towards true and real food over the last decade, it seems more important than ever to protect and fight back when these simple things, these words are at risk of being marginalized and homogenized just as they are taking hold in public discourse.

Just another something to think about the next time you are trying to chose what to have for lunch.

Lambstravaganza V - A Feast In The Field

This past weekend I got the chance to participate in a great Slow Food St. Louis event called Lambstravaganza. Simply titled as "A Feast In The Field", the event allows some of St. Louis's finest chefs to celebrate the lamb raised by Dave and Barb Hillebrand on Prairie Grass Farms in New Florence, Missouri. 

Proceeds from the event are used to support Slow Food St. Louis’ Micro Grant program.  Started in 2009, the program has given more than $12,000 to area farmers to encourage them to produce heirloom and heritage vegetables and livestock.  It is the hope of Slow Food St. Louis that by taking on a share of the financial burden farmers are faced with by subsidizing the purchase of the necessary seed, livestock or equipment, that they can foster biodiversity to both maintain and enrich our region’s agricultural heritage.

I'd like to thank the Hillebrand's for having us out to their farm on such a fine Sunday afternoon. I'd also like to thank the chefs, beer and wine makers who donated their time and skills to help celebrate local food. 

The line up included:

Monarch - Joshua Galliano
Yia Yia's - Rob Uyemura
SleeK Steakhouse  - Steve Caraveli
Entre Underground -  John Perkins
Five Bistro - Anthony Devoti
Sidney Street Café - Kevin Nashan
Niche - Gerard Craft
Farmhaus Restaurant - Kevin Willmann
Schlafly Beer
Les Bourgeois Vineyards

I hope you enjoy these photos from the farm and just a few of the dishes served up that day. 

Prairie Grass Farms in New Florence, Missouri

Prairie Grass Farms in New Florence, Missouri

The menu of eight courses, by chef. Each course featured lamb, eggs and goat milk sourced from Prairie Grass Farms.

Offal, legs and chicken eggs.

Lamb loin.

Lamb shanks and rib sections.

Lamb shoulder, beef

Lamb neck, leg and sweet breads.

Thanks again to everyone who worked to put this event together -- I can't wait for next year. If you are not already a member of Slow Food, I highly encourage you to get involved. You can find out more information and locate your local chapter here.

For Immediate Release - Attention Piggies And Cows - You Are On Notice

First annual BBQ Competition and Tweetup. (perhaps someone can come up with a catchy name that reflects St. Louis, Twitter, and BBQ)
 
What is it? - A group of people (the "competitors") will cook Ribs (pork), Pork Butt (pulled pork), and Brisket (beef) through the night and early morning hours of the event.  The competitors can cook any or all of those items.  Given that the competitors will be individuals and not competition teams it's unlikely many will attempt to do all due to space restrictions.  So if you're only good at one of those things then by all means sign up.  Competitors will necessarily consume large amounts of alcohol in the process and have been given advance reprieves for any untoward behavior they may exhibit.  Another group of people (the 'consumers'..get it) will then arrive without having done any work whatsoever and partake in all of the goodness that is BBQ.  We'll follow KCBS rules for the most part.

When is it? - We are currently looking at the "spring break" period (generally in mid March).  As weather is always a factor in the St. Louis area at that time of the year (short sleeves, Down jacket, or rain slicker?) we'll firm this date up as it approaches and ideally have a backup date.

Where is it? - The event will be in the St. Louis area, but you're welcome to come from as far away as you like.  In fact, maybe we'll do something special for whoever travels the furthest. I have a couple of possibilities that we can definitely use (football field sized), and there's always the option of renting an area from a local park, but if you've got a great option by all means suggest it.

How is it judged? - We will select members from the local St. Louis twitter community that we feel have some appreciation and in-depth knowledge for the BBQ'ing arts.  It will be a blind judging, but those who are willing to judge *and* take bribes for preferential treatment will be prioritized.

How much is it? - Unknown at this time since it is dependent upon the shape and size of the final event.  In addition we need to decide if we want to try and make a "profit" that could go to a charity, or to simply try and offset out of pocket expenses.  Thoughts on this would be appreciated.

Who is doing this? - Matt Ridings and Andrew Veety are organizing this event, however we could use all the help we can get.  Lots of skills and access to resources would be great that have nothing to do with BBQ, such as:

• Graphic Design - For things like email invitations, website, t-shirt designs, etc.
• T-shirts
• Infrastructure Organization - Tables, chairs, trash, tents, etc.  And no, I don't mean I want you to bring trash, I mean we need a way to collect and dispose of it in a green friendly way.
• Music - This would be great, and there are certainly a lot of us out there with access to some great musicians/bands.  From a location perspective however I would have to insure access to a decent amount of electricity close by (or an Unplugged acoustic set will be the order of the day)
• Marketing - This is a tweetup, so we need you to get the word out via your friend network.  However, you may want to think twice before inviting that "friend" who wants you to constantly look at the link with her pics
• Other - We'll need hands, brains, and muscles. Feel free to bring one or more of those to the table, but I'd recommend a minimum of at least your hands because let's face it, you'd just look weird without your hands.

Want to participate? Please leave a comment below with what you might be able to help with, if you want to compete, or if you simply have a question.  Or drop us a line at techguerilla or amveats on twitter.  We literally came up with this idea 30 minutes ago so we're evolving in real time.

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Entre:Underground - A Thanksgiving Feast

In years past my good friend Bob and I would organize a supper club called Bob and Andrew's Restaurant, or Andrew and Bob's Restaurant or just "The Restaurant", depending on who you asked. 

The challenge would be to create an innovative multi course meal for 10 - 15 people that would cost no more than $5.00 a person before a pairing of wine or a beer that I had brewed. We worked on this project for almost a year, meeting a handful of times before it faded into a background of weddings, babies and obligations that dominate our daily lives. 

As I remember its inception, the idea for our club came from a story I was telling about a underground restaurant in Queens. Nestled into a quiet middle class neighborhood in Middle Village an Italian family served traditional family style meals complete with wine for $50.00. As they served a fixed number of people per night and it was not uncommon to knock on the door and be told to try again next weekend, if the door was answered at all. 

"The Restaurant" was great fun but it quickly grew unwieldily and its restriction to charging no more than $5.00 a head, while egalitarian, was restrictive beyond belief. 

Anyway, these were the thoughts that simmered in the back of my mind like the foundation of a good stock as I made my way up a dark street and to the front door of an amazing home in Soulard to attend an event that had all the elements of not only a supper club, but a deliciously secret rave as well.

But how had I ended up here?

I first discovered this roving event a few weeks ago when I got a message on Twitter that led to a web site describing an event that had a few spaces left:

"Interested in going? DM me on twitter. Have too much to say in a tweet about why you'd want to go? Just add your comments below. Don't worry about the cost as it isn't cheap, whatever you can or can't contribute is fine. I'll pick up the rest.  Whether you check the box as male, female, or "other" is fine with me. I'm happily married thank you very much  But you *must* love food. Additional bonus is that you will then be on the invite list for all future dinners."

Sadly the date available happened to be my birthday and friends had organized a dinner long ago so I was unable to go. But over the next week I was added to a list of interested parties and received a tweet that read:

"just ordered hudson valley fois, 6 whole peking ducks, moulard breast, leg and things from pasture 2 plate"

Again I was unable to rsvp as I was scheduled to spend the weekend hanging out and cooking at a lake house in the Ozarks. Each message regarding this cryptic dinner left me wanting to attend more. The tweets continued and soon I was emailed a link and password to a website where I could RSVP to a future meal. 

Jackpot. 

I RSVP'ed for 2 for what was a meal called "Rethinking Thanksgiving", eventually leading a friend and I to this dark doorway in Soulard. What follows is a recap of the meal I enjoyed at a table full of strangers, I hope it inspires you to seek out the clandestine chef. I know I'll be back for more.

For supplemental information I'll link to my tweets and twit-pics from the evening. Yes I took more pictures than this, but really, you don't think I went through all this work to share everything now did you? 

My evening with the Entre:Underground - A Thanksgiving Feast - in seven parts:

Upon entering we were welcomed and given a glass of Cava Carbo, a sparking wine from Spain, and then were left to mingle with the few diners that had already arrived, explore the house and ask questions in the kitchen as a team of chefs and assistants prepped a meal for 30 people, split between two long tables in a cavernous room off the kitchen. As I was as interested in how an evening like this was pulled off, I grabbed seats with a direct view of the action in the kitchen.

First:

A slim plate with crostini and a deconstructed stuffing of turkey braised in cider and cranberry, a celery foam and fried sage and paired with a 2008 Alder Ffeiz Gewurztraminer. A well executed amuse bouche, providing a glimmer of what was ahead and capturing the flavors of perfect stuffing. The braised turkey reminded me of Thanksgiving meals with my family, where my mom lays the neck of the bird over the dressing as it cooks in the oven and we take turns picking at the moist and dark meat throughout the day.

Second:

The chef visits our table to tell us about a green bean casserole with mushrooms that were just hours removed from growing on a tree, topped with crisp slices of garlic in the place of the customary strips of fried onion. Pairing was a delicious 2008 Brampton Sauvignon Blanc. 

I recall wondering if there was any more of that braised turkey...

Third:

A refresh of the Sauvignon Blanc and a request to make conversation and await an off the menu course thats being constructed on the fly, a house made turkey sausage wrapped in dough - pigs in a blanket sitting atop a decadent cranberry sauce.

I grab my phone and snap a picture, tweeting: 

"Secret extra dish - pigs in a blanket! #amazing". I follow this up with a tweet directed at the chef, "I'm sitting here - amazing - bravo. So happy."

Fourth:

Quite possibly my favorite dish of the evening was a playful take on mac and cheese (picture). An amazing combination of cheese crisp sitting in a pasta soup with chives and bacon. Paired with my favorite wine of the night, a 2006 Paraiso Syrah that was full of oak, I could have ended the evening here. 

The soup was smoky from the bacon and a perfect foil for the cheese crisp which I broke off in small pieces with my spoon and savored. For the first time in the evening, I stopped talking and concentrated on the dish. 

It is always a good sign when I turn quiet at a meal, because as my wife will tell you, I never shut up. 

Fifth:

A pallet cleanser of cranberry sorbet sitting on a generous base of honey. I share a story with all in earshot that my parents tell about the first time they had a pallet cleanser with a meal. Long story short they used the sorbet to "butter" their bread. I love that story, but not as much as the heady mixture of cranberry and honey. Just rich.

I direct another tweet at the chef: 

"love that you guys are working so hard and rocking this place - while pounding some PBR's. =D".

Sixth:

The main course of a turkey and duck ballotine, wrapped in bacon and paired with broad sweeps of cream corn, goat cheese polenta and spinach (picture). One of our fellow diners asks what a ballotine is, and I reply with a tweet from earlier in the afternoon:

"Wikipedia's entry for ballotine is short and sweet. Its recommendation? See Also "Turducken". Have to love rolled and stuffed meat."

For the first time I realize that we've been eating for two and a half hours, then I dig in, making sure to gather up each flavor in every bite. A 2008 Dain Savage Juilet Pinot Noir complemented the neapolitanesque combination of bacon, turkey and duck. 

Not to be forgotten is a simple roll dusted with sea salt and sage. Happiness ensued when half of a second roll showed up on my plate, complements of my friend Steph who wrestled an extra helping from the waitstaff. 

Seventh:

A fun play on creme brulee in the form of a pumpkin custard topped with a pumpkin seeded lace cookie. More like a pumpkin flan, the key to this dish was the crunch of the cookie, which takes the place of a traditional caramelization of sugar. A square, yes square, cup of coffee on the side was an excellent ending to this meal.

To wrap the evening, each member of that evenings underground meal took a moment and told us a bit about themselves, brining the meal to an end. As each person explained their story and how they ended up preparing the evenings meal, I could not help but think of the small supper club that my friend Bob and I ran. While backgrounds ranged from bankers to biologist to chefs, it was clear that each was there to be part of something special and for St. Louis, very unique. 

Many thanks for the amazing meal and best of luck to the new friends we met that night. I can't wait to return for seconds.

Project Planning - Trisket 2009 - A Turkey Stuffed Inside A Brisket

Scared? You should be.

Every year my friend (and sometimes contributer) Jeff and his wife Leslie have a meal called "Fakesgiving" for all of their friends here in St. Louis who are far from home for the holiday. Essentially a Thanksgiving themed pot luck dinner, Fakesgiving is largely a vegetarian event, but every year there is a small turkey breast for the carnivores, until last year when Jeff asked me to make something special for the event.

What to make, what to make? I decided to borrow the idea of the "turducken", but put a Thanksgiving spin on it and stuff turkey inside of a beef brisket. I ran my idea past my friend, Chef David Koon, and we worked out a stuffing that would hopefully hold up to the extended cooking time a brisket needs. While he was more than a bit suspect of the concept, I know he was sad that he missed out on this project after seeing the pictures and was really excited to hear about it after it was cooked and served.

You can read more about it and see a movie of the process here.

While I have claimed over the last 11 months that the Trisket was a one time only event, as summer has turned to fall I've really been thinking about giving it a go once again. Over the coming weeks, I'll be revisiting the contents of the original stuffing; ground turkey, heads of roasted garlic, leeks, shallots, red bell peppers, bacon and dried cranberries. I'm also re-tooling the vinegar-based cranberry, peach and habanero barbecue sauce that I served on the side.

For the stuffing, I'm thinking about switching things to a traditional southern corn bread stuffing or perhaps a sausage and oyster stuffing - although I'm worried about oyster meat making it though the 20 + hour cooking schedule. I'm still pondering how to leverage the classic tastes of the season with the fact that I'm basically creating a turkey meatloaf that rides inside of a smoked brisket. I think if I embrace the idea of meatloaf a bit more, I can come up with something special to blow peoples minds - a core of andouille sausage, inside a meatloaf, inside a brisket perhaps?

For the sauce, I''m leaning towards removing the cranberry altogether, or at least the addition of whole cranberries. Perhaps the addition of canned cranberry sauce might work, but the jury is still out here.

In any event, I know I said "never again" for this holiday cooking adventure, but the concept is just to tasty to walk away from. More to come. Thoughts and ideas are welcome.

Gobble gobble.

Amuse Bouche For September 15th, 2009

• Via the Riverfront Times, Sapphire Pan-Asian has closed. I can't say that I'm all that upset about his CWE restaurant fading into history. I was not impressed at all with Sapphire, which struck me as all hat, no cattle. 
• Lots of press about my friends Penn & Teller iPhone app. Wall Street Journal, Venture Beat,and my favorite quote via the LA Times, "When venture capitalist George Zachary asked what business he was, at least theoretically, being asked to invest in, Jillette shot back, "There’s no venture capital required. We’re done and it’s for sale now." Asked what he was going to do next, Jillette said, "I’m going to go to Las Vegas and shoot bullets at my partner Teller."
• The Urban Review STL reflects on the Great Streets Test Project taking place on South Grand. I think they should focus on a tutorial on how to merge two lanes into one. St. Louis, the only place I know where folks watch NASCAR on Sunday and then take to the streets and pretend to be NASCAR drivers on Monday.
• In September, any first-time donation to Slow Food USA will make you a member.
• Farmer, lecturer and author Joel Salatin will speak at Webster University’s Grant Gymnasium Monday, October 5. I hope he brings pictures of his monster truck / rolling chicken coop.
• I am coveting a restored 1949 REO Speedwagon complete with a wood burning pizza oven. Sometimes I think all the good ideas are used up, the I see things like this that give me hope for humanity.

Amuse Bouche For September 11th, 2009

Another day, another group of disjointed things I've been reading and doing....

• Excited that I'm developing a new concept around work day lunch time eats, angered that I forgot my camera when I left for work, again.
• Lamenting that it looks like I will miss American IPA night at The Good Pie as well as Hop In The City this year.
• S. 1650: A bill to amend the Richard B. Russell National School Lunch Act to improve the purchase and processing of healthful commodities for use in school meal programs has entered the Senate. More at Slow Food USA
• Really enjoying the September 21st edition of "The Nation" which is dedicated to essays on Food Democracy, with essays by Alice Waters and Michael Pollan among others. Complementary to a recent article in Time on the real cost of cheap food.
• Sauce Magazine takes a tour of some of the best fries in St. Louis, manages to forget the amazing fries at The Dubliner. They make up for it with the recipe for the Subcontinental at The Royale on page 30 of the Wine, Beer & Spirits supplemental to the September print copy. While I almost always avoid cheese sandwiches, I'm oddly intrigued by the photo of the meatloaf melt at Jennifer’s Pharmacy. I blame Jonathan Pollack's tasty photo for my change in attitude.
• A year ago today I juxtaposed George Washington, Geroge W Bush and Sarah Palin. 8 years ago I walked out of my office to grab some coffee, looked up Broadway and saw the WTC on fire. I'm also still unsure if I should develop the roll of film I took that morning as I walked out of the city to Queens.
• Sure it works on the coasts, but will my Son get beat up when I pack him his first Bento Box for a school lunch?

Alice Waters Get's Her Wish

60 Minutes did a piece on famous chef, restaurant owner and Slow Food advocate Alice Waters recently, discussing the relationship between food, the Earth and our lives. 

Among the highlights of her interview were the ideas that healthy food is not a luxury, but a right of all people and her desire to have a vegetable garden planted at the White House.

Well Alice, congratulations, via the New York Times, "Michelle Obama will begin digging up a patch of the South Lawn on Friday to plant a vegetable garden, the first at the White House since Eleanor Roosevelt’s victory garden in World War II."  

The Times continues, "While the organic garden will provide food for the first family’s meals and formal dinners, its most important role, Mrs. Obama said, will be to educate children about healthful, locally grown fruit and vegetables at a time when obesity and diabetes have become a national concern." 

I am so happy that awareness continues to grow on this issue and I am looking forward to shopping the great farmers markets we have here in St. Louis. I hope this interview and associated article inspires you to shop and eat locally this season as well.

Some more information

• Slow Food USA
• Slow Food St. Louis 
• Missouri Farmers Market Directory  
• Tower Grove Farmers Market
• Local Harvest Grocery 

A Super Bowl Brisket - Part 3

The Super Bowl came and went, as did the brisket that I put together for the party. As you can see above, twelve hours of hickory and apple smoke left its mark on this brisket, penetrating over a quarter inch in some places. 

The ends of the meat were caramelized and perfectly toothsome and tender, however I estimate it would have taken another two to three hours in the smoker to turn the middle from a chewy and pink center to something that I would be completely proud of. In the end I just ran out of time before the game started to finish this long cooking cut of beef.

Regardless, I had a great day tending to the smoke and slowly mopping this brisket with the sweet and spicy sauce that was a hit at the party. I really enjoyed the fact that my friends dug into this six pound slab of meat, leaving an empty cutting board by the time the Steelers came from behind to win the game. My only regret is that I didn't shave myself off a few slices to keep for a midnight sandwich after the game. 

Beef brisket is a treat that is a serious investment of time and resources, but is so very worth it in the end. I hope you enjoyed walking though the process, and I hope you give it a try soon.

Additional Information:

A Super Bowl Brisket - Part 1 - Know thy butcher, what to buy, dry rub

A Super Bowl Brisket - Part 2 - Mop sauce and Barbeque Sauce

A Super Bowl Brisket - Part 2

It's a around 4 hours into the smoking process for this years Super Bowl brisket and I've just applied the first mopping of the jalapeno and peach barbeque sauce I finished up last night. 

The sauce started with a base of beef stock, white wine, vinegar, honey, peaches, jalapeno peppers with most of the ribs and seeds removed, shallots, garlic, apricot preserves, sea salt, cracked pepper and chili powder. After brining the ingredients to a boil, I used an emersion blender to combine the mixture and then lowered the temperature to a slow rolling boil. 

After reducing the liquid by a third, I reserved part of the sauce to use as a mop for the next days smoking, allowing the mixture to cool and the flavors combine in the fridge overnight. Then I continued to reduce the remaining liquid until it was a sweet and spicy sauce to use as a side for the game.

After the first few hours, its a good idea of mop a brisket every hour or so. The vinegar in the mop will help keep the brisket moist, and will also help tenderize the meat. Because of the sugar content of this mop, its a good idea to apply it in thin coats, allowing it to build a nice caramelized layer over the course of the day.

A Super Bowl Brisket - Part 1

Its the afternoon before the Super Bowl, and while I don't have a dog in this fight, I am gearing up for the eating. For me, the menu for tomorrow's game has to include some barbeque, and for the game I'm making a smoked beef brisket with a jalapeno and peach barbeque sauce on the side for folks who would like to add it on their plate.

Preparation for this project began a full two days before the game with a visit to Legrand's in St. Louis. I've been really happy with the selection and the staff at Legrand's, but they really came though on my last visit. 

When I arrived I was sad to find only a few small briskets in the case which had been trimmed of all the fat needed to protect a brisket over a twelve to fourteen hour ride in a smoker. After some persistent questioning and arm twisting the butcher disappeared into the cooler and eventually emerged with a six pound choice cut brisket with a creamy fat cap about a quarter inch thick after initially telling me that the trimmed cuts were all he had.

I'm in no way upset with my recent experience at Legrand's, because I've come to expect an adventure with each visit to their shop. Conversations with the staff have an interview feel to them, almost like the butchers are trying to match a cut with a shopper, steering a person to the product that will give them the greatest chance of success. In my case I'd like to think that I earned this brisket that I can only assume was being held in reserve for their own smoker. 

As always - know thy butcher.

For this brisket, I created a rub of brown sugar, kosher salt, cracked pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, ancho chili powder, chili powder, cayenne pepper, powdered mustard and powdered ginger following a basic 8-3-1-1 ratio. 

I liberally covered each side of the brisket with the rub and planned on a thirty six hour rest in the fridge. This extended period of time allows the meat to absorb the salt and seasoning, brining it into the meat much like a brine. 

The term rub has a hint of personal interpretation to it, I know cooks who simply cover the meat with rub and then wrap and others who don gloves and rub the spices right into the meat. My method rests someplace in between, covering and then patting with a hand to prevent cross contamination of my prep surfaces.

After a rubdown, the brisket is wrapped in plastic wrap and then in foil to keep as much air away from the meat as possible. I also reserve the package of rubbed brisket to a cookie sheet, an additional precaution to prevent raw meat juices from contaminating my fridge.

With a 5:30 PM central kick off time, my plan is to get this brisket in the smoker around 3 AM on Sunday morning for a long day of low and slow heat provided by hickory and apple woods.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of this Super Bowl brisket, I've got a mop and barbeque sauce to make before grabbing a few hours sleep.

Chicago Style Deep Dish Pizza - Revisited

Recently I threw a pizza party with three different kinds of dough; a neo-Neapolitan like you would find in New York City and New Haven, a pizza bianca that is derived from the pizzas found in Rome and for the centerpiece a stuffed Chicago deep dish, filled with 4 kinds of pork. The goal was to make 6 pizzas in one night for 10 guests - and to see if I could make them say "please, no more pizza".

The last time I made a deep dish was Election Night 2008, using a cast iron skillet and my traditional neo-Neapolitan dough with some corn meal added for an "authentic" texture and taste. While that pie was indeed good, it did not turn out like I had planned. This time I spent several evenings reading though my cookbooks and searching the internet to plan a more appropriate outcome for this classic pizza.

In the end, I developed a dough based on the Chicago deep dish pizza dough in Peter Reinhart's book, "American Pie", with some minor changes:

14 oz unbleached bread flour

4 oz semolina flour

2/3 cup yellow corn meal

2 tbs sugar

2 1/2 tsp kosher salt

2 1/4 tsp instant yeast

3 tbs vegetable shortening

2 tbs extra virgin olive oil

1 1/2 room temp water

Instructions for a standing mixer using a dough hook:

1. Mix flours, corm meal, sugar, salt, shortening, oil, yeast and water at low speed for 5 minutes until the mixture forms a ball in your bowl. Rest 20 minutes.
2. Mix again on medium to medium high for 5 - 10 minutes depending on your mixer, until dough passes a windowpane test. 
3. Ball dough, brush with olive oil and reserve to a mixing bowl or large zip lock bag for at least 2 hours at room temp. (Unlike other doughs, a slow rise in the fridge will not help this dough).
4. Divide the dough in two after volume doubles and rest for another 20 minutes before assembling your pie.

The dough should roll very easily without tearing. For the first step, I took the first rolled ball and lined the inside of a spring form pan which I had brushed with olive oil. Next I layered on mozzarella cheese, spicy sausage, sweet sausage, bacon and salami. The sausages and bacon were precooked a few hours before building this pie.

Next take the second rolled dough ball and lay it over the first layer. At this point I trimmed the dough with a pair of scissors and folded the outside layer onto itself making a rim for the second layer, pinching the dough back into itself to create a seal. I vented this layer by poking the dough with a fork to let steam escape.

I picked up an interesting fact in my research about the Chicago style pizza - many pizzerias don't make a pizza sauce for their pies, instead they used crushed or diced tomatoes from a can. In this case I used two 14 oz cans of diced tomatoes (with most of the liquid drained off) mixed with several stems worth of chopped fresh oregano. The "sauce" is then layered in over the dough.

The last step is to top the sauce with additional cheese. In this case I used a mixture of parmigiano reggiano, pecorino romano and montasio cheeses. All of these cheeses are rather hard and withstood the long cook time. If you use a softer cheese, I would recommend topping your pie after cooking is half done.

While I had told folks I was aiming for a nine pound pie, I "only" managed 5 pounds, 2 ounces. 

This pie cooked at 375 degrees for almost 70 minutes. Halfway though cooking I covered the pie with foil to keep the crust from burning. I let the pie cool on a rack for 15 minutes before removing the spring form.

The end product - a perfect Chicago style stuffed deep dish pizza, the cornerstone pie at a pizza party that included these great pies:

On the left we have a pizza bianca fresh from the oven topped with heirloom tomatoes, mozzarella, parmigiano reggiano, pecorino romano and montasio cheeses. On the right we have the beautiful failure of the night, a New Haven style clam pizza. 

Everyone at the party was apprehensive about trying an east coast clam pie, but I assured them that it was fantastic. I even made my own herb oil to top the pie with. Unfortunately I seasoned each layer of this pie with French gray sea salt, turning this anticipated pie into the monster from the salty, briny deep. Oh well, it was beautiful on the outside, even if it tasted like a salt lick on the inside. You learn.

Pies not pictured were a Hawaiian pizza with pineapple and barbecued baby back rib meat and an apple, potato and leek pie. Both were delicious but somehow missed photographs. I can only assume we we were all to drunk off pizza to notice that the photography has stopped.

I hope this inspires you to host your own pizza party, I know I can't wait for my next one.

Caldo de Res

On new year's day a friend brought over Caldo de Res, a delicious soup filled with a rich beef broth, vegetables and fork tender cuts of beef short ribs. Paired with fresh lime juice on corn tortillas, Caldo de Res is a perfect pairing for both the hangover of the previous nights festivities and for the cold weather outside.

To make Caldo de Res, take beef shank or ribs with the bone in, cut into large chunks and season with salt and pepper. Brown the beef along with some onions, then add beef stock and tomato. Bring to a boil, then back off the heat and simmer for an hour or until the beef is fork tender.

Next quarter potatoes and ears of corn and add to the soup along with carrots and chhayote or zucchini. Add fresh cilantro to taste, water to cover the ingredients and bring the soup back to a boil.

Once a boil is reached, back off the heat again and simmer for 20 minutes, then add a head of cabbage which has been halved and then halved again. Simmer for another 10 minutes.

Serve with corn tortillas which have been rubbed with the juice of a lime. Not knowing exactly how to approach this soup I added some beef and vegetables to the tortilla, wrapped up it like a taco and then dunked the whole thing into the broth to soak up the juice before eating. While it might not have been the "correct way", it was an amazing combo, especially the combination of lime juice and tortilla.

Many thanks to Rowdy Zamora for introducing me to this outstanding dish, I can't wait to try it again.

Old Guy Extra Special Bitter - Update

The Old Guy ESB has spent some quality time in the cellar since we last checked in on it in October. 

A little over two weeks ago I bottled this beer in one liter bottles with Grolsch style tops. The EZ-cap brand bottles are a favorite of mine because they always provide a satisfying "pop" when you open them if the beer has carbonated well.

My first thought is that this beer is over carbonated as it put on quite a show when I popped the lid, but I was happy that the beer did not foam out of the bottle. Served at a cellar temperature of 55 - 58 degrees, a slow pour produced a rocky and long lasting head that actually climbed several inches out of the glass before cresting and running down the side of my pint.

This bottle conditioned and unfiltered ale had little evidence of haze or residue thanks to the addition of roasted barley. This grain added a stout-like color that would make it hard to see any perceived imperfections in the beer to drinkers who are used to filtered mass marketed products.

The toasted flavors of roasted and crystal barley played nicely with the nutty overtones contributed by an addition of Munich and pale malts. Hidden in the background was some bitterness contributed by a very small addition of rye to the grist. I will look to add more the next time I make this recipe, perhaps doubling the addition to half a pound.

A fantastic balance of East Kent Goldings and Williamette hops complemented the malty character of this beer. This ESB could benefit from dry hopping in a second fermentation, but that extra step would be a nice to have, not a must have.

Suggested pairings include braised beef short ribs, whole roasted chicken with root vegetables, sharp cheddar cheese or dark chocolate.

Breakdown by the numbers:

Original Gravity (OG) - 1.061 - 1.065

Final Gravity (FG)- 1.011 - 1.013

Alcohol By Volume (ABV) - 5.5 - 6.0

International Bitterness Units - (IBU) - 65

Standard Reference Method (SRM) - 25 Lovebond

Trisket - A Turkey Inside a Brisket

Trisket is an idea I thought up for a friends annual Thanksgiving celebration, Fakesgiving, where we all gather and bring a dish to pass, pot luck style.

In honor of this yearly event, I took a beef brisket and stuffed it with ground turkey thighs, bread crumbs, bacon, roasted garlic, peppers, cranberries, leeks, mushrooms, shallot and flat leaf parsley. 

Turkey inside of a brisket = trisket.

I started with a 6lb grass fed organic beef brisket from Whole Foods with a pocket cut in it to hold the stuffing. The brisket held up well using this method, as it is essentially a large muscle and up to the task of having a turkey stuffing crammed into it. All told, the stuffing added another 4-5 lb to the overall cooking weight. In hindsight I'm sure I could have gotten some more stuffing in there if I really wanted to. 

For the turkey, I used ground thigh meat which had the best chance of making it though the 13 hours of cooking without drying out. To add some Thanksgiving flavor, I mixed the ground turkey with heads of roasted garlic, leeks, shallots and dried cranberries.

The key to this stuffing is to maintain moisture throughout the long cooking time. The ample fat marbling of a beef brisket did a great job keeping the meat moist, however I also added thick cut bacon to the mix to help baste the stuffing as well. I used a mixture of bread crumbs and cremini mushrooms as a binder and to absorb moisture. 

The brisket was stuffed the day before cooking and rubbed with a mixture of sea salt, black pepper, smoked paprika and onion and garlic powders. After rubbing, the brisket was wrapped tightly in plastic wrap, placed onto a cookie sheet and stored in the coldest part of the refrigerator for an overnight rest. 

At about 4am the next morning, I took the brisket out to warm up while I made coffee and started a fire for the smoker. While the idea of letting meat rise to room temperature before placing on the grill works great with steaks, 30 minutes was not enough time to do much for a 10 lb roast and the meat was still refrigerator cold when it was placed in the smoker.

This brisket was smoked over apple and hickory wood at 200 - 215 degrees for 10 hours, refilling the smoker every 45 - 60 minutes to maintain this low temperature. I used a spray bottle filled with beef stock and apple cider to baste the meat when the grill was open. 

After smoking all day, the brisket was then placed in a roasting pan with some of the basting liquid, covered tightly with foil, and placed into a 190 degree oven for another 3 hours to finish cooking.

The end result was a great beef brisket on the outside and a turkey meatloaf on the inside. The brisket turned out perfect with a great looking 1/4 inch smoke ring. The turkey was moist and had all the smells of a Thanksgiving meal.

The Trisket was served with a vinegar-based cranberry, peach and habanero barbeque sauce on the side. The use of fresh cranberry and peach added a tartness and sweetness to play against the heat of the habanero chili. While I can't see myself making a Trisket again anytime soon (it really was a two day process) I do think this barbeque sauce would match nicely with slow smoked ribs or chicken.

Thanks to Chef David Koon for his help taking this idea from idea to application.

Newstead Tower Public House

Nestled among the treasure trove of new restaurants in The Grove section of St. Louis you can find the Newstead Tower Public House. The owners use the term gastropub and public house to describe their eatery, but in the end the meaning is the same - kicked up pub food paired with great beers and wines. 

Among my favorites on the menu is the burger, locally raised grass fed beef topped with field greens, whole cap mushrooms, caramelized onions, house made quick pickles, ketchup and mayo. Burgers are served with super thin house made chips that play off the meal nicely, without weighing you down like a basket of fries can.

Burgers are skillfully cooked to order, in my case medium rare with a good sear and juices that mix with the toppings and run gloriously down your chin and hands. The bun also appears to be house made and performs admirably to the task of holding this burger together from start to finish.

Opinion: Recommended

4353 Manchester Ave.

St. Louis, Missouri 63110

314-535-7771

Election Night 2008 Recap

Tuesday night's election gave me an excuse to embrace decadence in multiple forms as long as I could tie it into the theme of the day - the election of Barack Obama.

My first stop was a post work happy hour with friends at The Three Monkey's, where lots of election day food and drink items were on the menu. That is, except this, which I named the Obamargarita. True, it was just a blue margarita, but it was tasty nonetheless.

For dinner I tried my hand at making a Chicago style deep dish pizza in a cast iron skillet. You'll have to excuse the lack of detail and instruction as I try my hand at documenting the trials and errors of turning out a onion, mushroom, garlic and spinach pie from scratch on a work day. 

 

An olive oiled cast iron skillet, brushed on both the bottom and sides. I've read that some pizzerias in Chicago do this to help the dough release after cooking. While I didn't think I would try to turn this pie out, I did want to be able to cut and serve it.

This is a version of the Neo-Neapolitan dough that I discussed back in August, with corn meal cut into the dough. Once baked I thought the dough came out more like a hybrid pizza/cornbread crust, which was tasty, but not what I was looking for. Room for improvement here for sure.

Sliced mozzarella cheese builds the base of a Chicago style pizza. All told this was about 6 or 7 slices.

The next layer was a mixture of spinach, onions, garlic and mushrooms that I sauteed on the stove before adding to the pizza. My goal was to cook most of the water out so it didn't end up pooling in the pizza during cooking. 

The next two layers were a chunky tomato sauce and Parmesan cheese. Next time I think I'll try adding the cheese layer about half way into cooking, if only for aesthetics when the pie is pulled from the oven.

I made a quick foil rim to cover the crust for the first 30 minutes of the 400 degree / 50 minute cooking time. I also let the pizza cool and set up for about 15 minutes before cutting.

I'll have to give several aspects of this recipe some thought before attempting again, especially the dough, which was sturdy enough to hold up to the mass of this pie, but not really what I was looking for. However, for all the things this pie was not, it was a welcome change from our normal pizza night pies. It was also a great night of celebration with friends stopping by all night to watch the results come in and partake of this Chicago masterpiece.

Old Guy Extra Special Bitter

With the daytime temperatures in St. Louis dropping to around 65, its getting to be a great time to make home brewed beers. My first beer of the year is an Extra Special Bitter, or ESB. 

Extra Special Bitter belongs to the pale ale family of beers, but with a larger hop profile. Well known commercial versions of this beer are Boddington's and Fuller's ESB. While I kept to style for the base of my ESB with American pale and crystal malts, I included Munich malt, roasted barley and a small amount of rye to round out the grain bill. I'm excited about the addition of rye, which should add a understated spicy finish to this beer.

I started with a first wort hop addition of East Kent Golding's and followed up with additional doses of Golding's and Willamette hops though out the boil in 15 minute intervals.

I would like to have this beer in bottles by the middle of November and share with friends and family over the holidays. I hope you enjoy these pictures showing several parts of the brewing process.

A yeast starter at krausen. A yeast starter increases the number of active yeast cells and aids in kicking off a fast and healthy fermentation. I made this starter about 36 hours before brewing.

Grains rolling through a mill. The grains are cracked so water and enzymes can help the sugars contained within each grain "escape" during the mashing process. This sugar becomes the fermentable that the yeast above will consume in the production of beer.

Sparging the mash and collecting the first running of wort. You can think of sparging as washing the last of the sugars off the grain bed.

A first wort addition of whole hops, soaking as the wort comes to a boil. Hops can be thought of as the spice of beer. Added early in the boil, hops contribute a bitter flavor to beer. In the later stages of the boil hops contribute aroma. 

Collecting wort in a fermentation vessel. In a few weeks this wort will become a young beer, and a month or so after that, a beverage shared with friends.

Can Chicken Experiment 01 - A Delicious Failure

I've always enjoyed making beer can chicken on the grill. With a little practice this method for cooking a whole chicken produces a moist and flavorful bird that will leave your guests asking for seconds.

A while back I threw a barbeque for a dozen friends and I decided it might be fun to switch up this classic meal by not only using a twelve ounce can of Budweiser, but also a Coke, a Dr. Pepper and a Schweppes Ginger Ale as well. My goal was to have a taste test to see which liquid additive resulted in the best tasting bird.

I began by brining each chicken overnight in apple cider, kosher salt, brown sugar, fresh ginger, quartered oranges and allspice berries. The next day I dried and rubbed each bird with the spice mixture I described in my post about float trip picnic chicken. The goal was to treat each chicken the same until it was put on the grill, which conveniently enough is the time when this culinary adventure veered off into failure. Yes, the final product was moist and delicious, but it was a failure nonetheless. 

As I planned this day my goal was to push as much barbeque flavor as I could into each bird, and for me this included cooking each chicken over indirect heat and using an abundance of mesquite smoke. After five hours of smoke and slow and low cooking, each bird was indeed flavorful, moist and fall off the bone tender. However, lost in the brine, spice rub and wood smoke was the purpose of this experiment - the taste imparted by each individual liquid. 

 

My guest were gracious and insisted that as far as taste was concerned we had reached a tie between beer and ginger ale. That may have been the case, but I’d like to reserve judgement until I have a change to revisit this idea. Next time I’ll skip the massive dose of smoke and cook at a higher temperature to really test my idea. 

Here is to happy mistakes and crazy ideas. I can’t wait to try this experiment again, because failure or not, can chicken makes for a great summer time meal.

Seafood Boil In The Heart of St. Louis

This post finds me thankful for my wife, Sara. A few years ago she found herself successful, but unhappy working for a large corporation here in St. Louis. In what was a test of our relationship and eventually our marriage, we decided that the time was right for her to leave her job and pursue a new career. Sara graduated right before we were married, and the events leading up to our wedding probably overshadowed her accomplishment of graduating with a degree in Interior Design more than either of us would admit. 

One year later Sara has continued her string of accomplishments, completing her LEED certification in environmental design. If you don't know what LEED is, you will soon. The ideas driving green building have a foundation in LEED, and in the near future those ideas will become everyday practice. I'm proud that Sara will be at the forefront of a new way of designing and building structures, with an appreciation for the relationship between people, the buildings we live and work in, the Earth and it's limited resources. 

To celebrate Sara's certification, I planned a cookout at our house that in hindsight had an enormous carbon foot print due to the main course - a seafood boil of snow crab from Alaska, new potatoes and fresh corn on the cob. Trying to stick with a tradition that I have only read about, I covered a part of our picnic area with brown paper bags, then poured the crab and vegetables onto the table where we all gathered around to a family style seafood feast.  

It was a rare moment of decadence with our hands covered in Old Bay and garlic infused butter, but it brought together good friends and Sara's favorite food to celebrate the hard work that she has completed. I guess in the end that made it even more of a moment to savor than the crabs themselves. 

Here is to large and small victories, and for hoping that we take the time to celebrate them with our friends and family. 

Welcome Fall

Nobody knows better than my wife that I love Alton Brown and his show Good Eats. Earlier this year he did an episode named “Apple of My Pie”, and knowing that apple pie is a fall time favorite of mine, my wife went out and got me a pie bird and tart pan in an effort to move me past store bought dough to making my own as Alton suggested.

 

Making pie dough was a challenge for me, however in the end everything came together. I can’t claim this recipe for my own, but I did make a slight change - I could not find apple jack and used apple vodka in its place. I would also increase Alton’s cooking times a bit for my oven, from 50 minutes to 60 or 70.

In the spirit of fall, I present my first from scratch pie, completed with a black bird, baked inside.

Monday Night Is Pizza Night

My wife and I love to make pizza dough and entertain guests with fresh pies topped fresh mozzarella cheese and vegetables that are in season.

For us, the idea of pizza night comes from 2 places, childhood memories and from a discussion we had as we drove across the south on our honeymoon. On that trip my wife read Barbara Kingsolver’s book “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” aloud to me as the miles and days passed. Pizza night was a standing date for the family in that book, and as we began our life together, we decided to try and make it part of our lives as well.

The memory of her reading as I drove is one of my favorite from that trip and I am reminded of it every few weeks when I break out the flours and yeast to make pizza dough.

Over the past few years I’ve developed a versatile dough based on a recipe I found in Peter Reinhart’s book, “American Pie: My Search for the Perfect Pizza”. Taking his recipe for a Neo-Neapolitan / New Haven-style dough and adding a few twists, I’ve found a dough that cooks well in my convection oven using a pizza stone preheated to 450 degrees for a half hour before baking off a pie.

This dough cooks up crisp and brown on the bottom and provides ample crust, or as I like to call the “the bones” to use as a hand hold.

Makes 2-3 dough balls

15.5 oz unbleached bread flour (by weight)
7.0 oz semolina flour (by weight)
1 tbs. sugar
1 tbs. honey
2 tbs. olive oil
1 tbs. garlic powder
1 tbs. oregano or marjoram
3.5 tsp kosher salt
1 tsp instant yeast
1.75 cups room temp water

You can make this dough by hand, however over time I’ve grown tired of the endless kneading and opt instead for a standing mixer. The following process uses a mixer, but you can approximate if you prefer to complete by hand.

1. In your mixer’s bowl, combine the flours, sugar, honey, oil, garlic powder, herbs and salt, mixing with a dough hook attachment on low speed.

2. Combine yeast and water, allowing the yeast to bloom and creating a slurry before adding to the mixing bowl. Ideally, you should add a bit of your slurry at a time as its easy to add more water to a dough and hard to remove it.

3. Mix on medium speed for five minutes until the dough takes shape and balls around the hook. Turn mixer off and allow dough to rest for another five minutes.

4. After the dough rests, mix again on medium speed for another three minutes, then remove to a surface lightly dusted with flour.

5. Cut in two or three pieces and create dough balls.

At this point, I will either place each ball into a zip lock bag with a splash of olive oil and into the fridge if I plan on using the next day or freezing, or place into metal mixing bows, again with olive oil to rise for use later that day.

Your baking time will depend on your tools and practice. For my convection oven, I bake at 450 degrees for eight to eleven minutes, turning the pie 180 degrees about half way though the bake. I highly recommend using a pizza stone or unglazed ceramic tile, but you can also use a baking sheet or your grill to turn out a pizza that will have your friends asking, “Is pizza night next Monday as well?”

Flipper Freddy’s Polish Pickles

When I was about 5 or 6 my parents packed up their drab green mid-seventies Chevrolet Impala and we set sail along the highways from Arizona to our new home in New York. As my parents arranged to buy our first home in New York, we lived with my Grandparents in Pine Bush, a small farming town about 90 miles outside of New York City.

We ended up living in the farm house my mother grew up for several months. While most of my attention as focused on playing with Matchbox’s cars in a mound of dirt near the driveway, I can remember being intrigued by the dark and steep stairs into the basement, its walls lined with mason jars filled with the bounty of the past summers harvest. It seemed my Grandparents would pickle just about everything they grew, beans, beets, carrots, celery and my favorite to this day, cucumbers.

As I attempt to garden myself and shop our local farmers markets when in season, I have a greater appreciation for the multicolored jars in my grandparents basement. Not only is canning, jarring and pickling a great way to extend a harvest into the fall and winter, it is a tradition that I hope to pass long to my children. The simple act of making pickles forces us to slow down and appreciate where our food comes from, and our relationship to it. Free from chemicals and preservatives, we are taking the best our gardens have to offer and saving a part of it to enjoy later.

With this in mind, this morning at the Tower Grove Farmers Market I came across a basket filled with Kirby cucumbers, each one seemingly as big around as they were long and most likely picked within the past 24 hours. I selected a dozen of the best cucumbers I could find as well as three heads of fresh garlic.

Placing my find on the scale, the farmer running the booth smiled and commented “Pickles”. I grinned and continued my shopping, but in the back of my mind I was thinking not only about the pickles that I would make when I got home, but also of all the possibilities they offered, wingmen to a future sandwich and perhaps a cookout where my pickles rode high on burgers along with fresh tomatoes, onion and lettuce.

Making refrigerator pickles at home is cheap, easy and produces a vastly superior product than what lines the shelves of your local grocery store. Once made, they will keep in your fridge for weeks. That is if you can restrain yourself from frequent visits, fork in hand for a taste a few every time you pass through the kitchen.

What follows is my recipe for Flipper Freddy’s Polish Pickles, in honor of my Grandfather, made in quart sized mason jars. As you make yours, just multiply the measurements below by the number of jars you have.

3 large Kirby cucumbers
1 Tablespoon fresh grated horseradish
Several cloves of fresh garlic, chopped roughly
10 Peppercorns
1 Teaspoon of mustard seed
1/2 Teaspoon sugar
1 Tablespoon Kosher salt
9 Oz. Water
5 Oz. White vinegar

1. Prepare a water bath for your jars, letting the jars and jar collars sit as you prepare your ingredients.

2. In a saucepan, combine water, vinegar, salt and sugar, heat until near boiling and combined. Remove brine from heat.

3. Slice or quarter your cucumbers and set aside.

4. Grate Horseradish and set aside.

5. Peel and chop fresh garlic and set aside.

6. Remove jars from the bath using a set of tongs, letting as much water as possible drain back into the bath, arrange in a conveyor belt fashion near your workspace.

7. Add horseradish, garlic, peppercorns and mustard seeds to your jar, then pack your cucumbers in, leaving a small headspace near the top.

8. Ladle brine over your cucumbers, enough to cover. You may need to shake each jar a little to eliminate any air pockets that may have developed.

9. Cap and hand tighten each collar, set aside on a countertop for several hours to cool.

10. Hand tighten collars again, reserve to fridge.

Your pickles should develop a great, spicy kosher pickle flavor over the next week to 10 days and will keep for weeks. Enjoy.

Float Trip Picnic Chicken

A simple pleasure of Midwest living is the "float trip". Coolers are packed with beverages and food, and then friends take off down the river in rafts, tubes and pretty much anything else that will, well, float. Ideally, when asked by friends and coworkers on the east coast why I live in Missouri with the heat, floods and tornadoes, I should point to the float trip as one of many reasons.

I was asked to make something to eat for a recent float trip, so I racked my brain and cookbook collection for a meal that would travel well in the Midwest heat while still feeding a large group. I decided that I wanted to make cold chicken, but there were several obstacles that I wanted to tackle before serving my waterlogged friends. At issue was how to prepare the meat so it would remain moist up to a day after cooking and what to do with the rubbery skin that can ruin an otherwise perfect piece of chicken.

Over the last few years, I've taken to selecting thighs as my cut of choice when preparing chicken. It's a shame they are so often overlooked as they are affordable and have a great meat to bone ratio. Also, the dark meat thigh stands up to abuse that would dry out its white meat counterpart, the breast. I almost always rub or brine chicken thighs before cooking, with some of my favorite combinations being an overnight soak in lemon juice, olive oil, scallions, garlic and tarragon or simply using my house spice rub.

For this float trip, I decided on barbecuing chicken using my go to dry rub to impart flavor, saving my friends from the glorious mess resulting from barbeque sauce covered hands.

My house rub is super easy and follows the pit master approved ratio of 8 - 3 - 1 - 1:

8 parts brown sugar
3 parts kosher salt
1 part chili powder
1 part other (can be any combination of spices and herbs, as long as it equals 1 whole part)

The beauty of this formula is that as long as you stick to the ratio, you can use any measurement you would like, be it tablespoons, cups or gallons. I usually make a large batch and keep it in a sealed shaker for chicken and ribs. I've also been known to jar it and give away at the holidays.

What follows is a two day process for making my cold picnic chicken.

Day 1

The afternoon before I planned on making these thighs, I washed, scored and carefully peeled back the skin (don’t totally detach) on each so I could season the meat with my rub. After seasoning, I folded the skin back and placed the thighs on a wire rack resting inside a baking sheet. Then I applied a second coating of the rub on top of the skin, covered loosely with foil and then placed in the coldest part of my fridge, the bottom shelf, for an overnight rest.

This method helps to solve one of the problems I was worried about, keeping the chicken moist as it cooked. The salt in my rub acts very much like a brine, drawing the natural water and salt out of the chicken to its surface, then back into the chicken hours later as the chicken reabsorbs the water and most of the rub. The net result is a "brine" that flavors the meat with the rub while keeping the chicken moist.

I alluded to how I approached eliminating soggy and rubbery chicken when I referenced scoring the skin before applying the rub. For each thigh, I used a chef's knife to cut inch long channels in the skin without cutting the meat. In general, chicken skin is full of fat which will not completely render during cooking - it has no way to escape and remains trapped under the skin. Scoring the skin provides an escape route for fat, allowing it to baste the chicken while cooking and letting the skin form a thin crispy layer.

Day 2

The day before our trip and my planning and prep work completed, I started a one zone fire in my grill, allowing me to cook the chicken thighs skin side up over low and slow indirect heat. Using a mixture of natural lump charcoal and apple wood chunks, I smoked these thighs for four hours at 225 degrees, replenishing the fuel supply as needed to maintain a consistent temperature. Several times during the process, I rotated the thighs skin side down over the hot zone, rendering out additional fat and to crisp the skin. I was quick to remove the chicken during flare-ups, and each thigh was not exposed to direct heat more than a minute or two in total.

After four hours on the grill, I brought the chicken inside, placed on a clean wire rack and baking sheet, covered with foil and left in the bottom shelf of the fridge. My wife and I shared a piece for lunch and it was everything I was looking for, moist, smoky with great barbecue flavor and thin crispy skin.

Bringing it all together:

The next day I packed the thighs into a cooler along with some other snacks, ice, beer, and what I am told is a float trip requirement, Jell-O shots. We enjoyed a great day on the river with friends and shared a fine lunch of cold picnic chicken on a sandbar before continuing on our way. Sure I got sunburned so bad that if you placed me on a bun I'd look like a lobster roll, but it was a great day nonetheless.

Roasted Garlic Strip Steaks with Texas Potatoes

I helped throw a bachelor party recently, and for me, bachelor parties mean steaks and steakhouses. In this case, we decided to bring the steakhouse into the home, with a dinner before we ventured out for the evening. In thinking about the menu, I took some time to reflect on one of the two bachelor parties I had last year, and the meal we took in at the Strip House in Manhattan. I used the ultra thick strip steaks simply accompanied by a whole head of roasted garlic from that dinner as the inspiration for these roasted garlic strip steaks cooked over a fire of natural lump charcoal and large chunks of mesquite.

While I have never been able duplicate the amazing steaks that I’ve had at my favorite steakhouses, I’ve been able to come close at home. Keys to success include knowing your butcher and planning for heat management.

The first step may be the hardest, knowing your butcher. I have several that I visit here in St. Louis depending on what I am cooking, and I keep coming back because each take the time to talk with you about the product you are buying and how you would like to prepare it. They will also cut and trim to your specifications. For this meal, I made my way over to the meat counter at Whole Foods, who carry beef that is free range and grass fed while remaining free of hormones and antibiotics. They also do custom cuts, so in quick order I was out the door with four two inch thick New York Strip Steaks, weighing a total of 89 ounces.

I prepared these steaks very simply. First I roasted off two heads of garlic in the oven with olive oil, kosher salt and fresh cracked pepper. After about an hour in the oven at 350 degrees, I let the garlic rest and cool before running it through a garlic press and into the olive oil I used for roasting. I added some more olive oil, covered and reserved for later that night. A few minutes before grilling, I spread the roasted garlic and oil mixture over the steaks along with kosher salt and fresh pepper.

The next key to grilling great steaks is heat management. In this case, I built a 2 zone fire using natural lump charcoal and a bed of mesquite wood. The first zone should be hot and large enough to put a good sear on the steaks, while the second should allow the steaks to finish with even, low heat.

As the grill was heating, I put my cast iron skillet over the hot zone and used that heat to start the universal steak house side, potatoes. As the bachelor was from Texas, I imagined what I would make if I was a cowboy, cooking out over fire on the range. The result was what I called Texas Potatoes.

In the skillet I combined six good sized Yukon gold potatoes with the skins on and sliced into disks, four thick slices of bacon, cut into half inch sections, red onion, kosher salt, pepper, and a stick of unsalted butter cut into eight pads. For the thirty minutes it took for my coals to come to temperature I kept the skillet over the hot zone, folding the potatoes over occasionally and letting them fry in the bacon fat and butter.

Is it healthy? Probably not. Is it tasty? You bet your ass.

After thirty minutes, I moved the skillet to the cooler zone of the grill and individually grilled slices of potatoes over the hot zone to get some marks on them. I did these about 10 at a time, and then added them back to the skillet.

When the coals were ready in the hot zone, I grilled each steak for three minutes on each side, turning 90 degrees once for crosshatched grill marks. After six minutes I moved each steak into the cooler zone to finish, about ten to twelve minutes for medium rare. When they were done, I removed them from the grill, covered with foil and rested for about ten minutes, reserving the juices to top the steaks when I plated.

I served these steaks and Texas potatoes with sautéed spinach, a fresh horseradish and chive cream dipping sauce, and a bottle of 2002 Chateau la Grande Roche Cabernet Sauvignon that I have been cellaring for just such a meal. We finished things off with glasses of 15 year old Balvenie single barrel single malt whisky – the perfect ending to a steakhouse meal at home.

Best of luck to the bachelor and to you in your summer grilling adventures.

A list of my favorite Steakhouses, in no specific order:

Andria’s – O Fallon, Illinois
Angelo & Maxies – Manhattan, New York
Capital Grill – Multiple Locations
Citizen Kane’s – Kirkwood, Missouri
Gallagher's – Manhattan, New York
Gene & Georgetti – Chicago, Illinios
Peter Lugar – Brooklyn, New York
Rod’s Steak & Seafood Grille – Morristown, New Jersey
Smith & Wollensky – Multiple Locations
Sparks – Manhattan, New York
The Strip House – Manhattan, New York

A New Religion in Mecca

The title of this post is a tip of the hat to the book “A New Religion in Mecca: Memoir of a Renegade Brewer in St. Louis” by Tom Schlafly. The book details the challenges, struggles and at times blind trial and error of starting a craft brewery in the shadow of the Anheuser-Busch brewery here in St. Louis. The title seems to fit me as June turns to July, and I absorb some changes to how I’ve done things for some time.

The first change involved a much needed personal inventory of my skill set at work. For some time, I’ve moved between the roles of project manager / business analyst and architect as required. My personal development has been shortsighted at times and non-existent others, mostly because of the demands of project work - who has time to attend training, no matter how important it is?

After some soul searching around the dinner table, I decided to try to focus my efforts on developing a base of technology skills that would complement the ones I have developed through 10 years of IT experience. A balancing of the pros and cons lead me to the conclusion that learning some SQL and perhaps attempting to teach myself Java using Eclipse as an IDE would be beneficial.

The SQL will come in handy for increasing my skills in the business intelligence and reporting space, which will complement my project management and business analyst skills. Over the coming days I will install mySQL and begin running through Alan Beaulieu’s O’Reilly book “Learning SQL”. I’ve always learned the most when I can apply what I am absorbing directly to a personal interests, so once I’m done with this current set of lessons I’m thinking about attempting to use mySQL to develop a custom set of reports for my investment club. I’ve been thinking about using the tool to generate price vs. P/E tables and graphs for the stocks we collectively own and/or argue about.

The Java will come in handy as unlike many in my field, I did not progress up the ranks from programmer to architect. Instead I ended up an Enterprise Architect because I needed to be promoted someplace. While I have learned a tremendous amount about technology, I think having a working knowledge of a development language will help me in project work.

However, these new goals are not in of themselves the epiphany mapping to the title of this post as I set goals all the time. Instead the first change to come was moving from Microsoft Windows to Apple Macintosh (24 Inch iMac, 4GB RAM, 1.5TB of storage) as a stepping stone to getting started in expanding my development skills beyond HTML. Though more expensive up front, the Apple is quickly becoming the tool of choice for application development and has more than enough power to function as a home computer and learning and development platform.

The transition is now largely complete and like the advertising says, everything worked right out of the box. Because we live in a PC world, I also loaded Microsoft Vista Ultimate Edition using Fusion from VMWare. Interestingly enough, the install of Fusion and Vista went easier than any Windows upgrade or install I’ve ever done. In total, the entire process took about 3 hours, including beer breaks as it was a holiday weekend. I bought a laptop running Windows XP about 18 months ago, and the entire setup took close to 12 hours, including a 3 hour trip back to the store to replace the first laptop with a new one. Its easy to see why Apple has a cult-like following that is taking share.

I’ve been very happy with the switchover experience. Most of my existing files moved seamlessly across platforms, and what PC specific applications I did have are running fine in Vista. I’m most interested in the functionality of Fusion, which lets you take a snapshot of an instance of an operating system as you run, in this case Vista, on a virtual machine. Should Vista become corrupted from a virus or from mis-administering the machine, into the Mac trash it goes and I can recover to the snapshot install in minutes. I also plan on installing a copy of Linux as well in the near future.

While the first change was thought out and planned to some extent, the second was quite different. For the 4th of July, we were planning on having a barbeque with about 15 people attending. I got up early and was in the back yard around 9:30 AM to clean up my gas grill and get it ready for smoking ribs and then cooking food for the party throughout the afternoon and evening. I started up the grill to clean off some leftover grime from the cookout the night before and went about getting ready to start smoking three racks of baby backs around 11:00 AM. I came back in about 30 minutes to find the grill cold with hardly any flame coming from the 3 grill bars.

Faced with the prospect of attempting to repair a 6 year old gas grill before our party, my wife and I decided to head to Home Depot to price out a new one. I have been contemplating a move from gas to charcoal for some time, but there really has not been a reason beyond the desire to do it. On the quick drive over, I had to contemplate a move without research or thought beyond day dreaming about the change.

6 years ago, I bought 3 burner stainless steel grill at Lowe’s for about 400.00. This has been a great tool for cooking burgers and steaks. I even managed to “smoke” (as much as you can using gas) whole chickens and pork ribs with success. However, as I toiled away in my backyard, the world moved on to a price point approaching 800.00 - 1000.00 dollars for a gas grill, complete with 4 burners, side burners, rotisseries with counterweight systems and warming trays. We now need grills to match the SUV’s in our driveways. I was forced to face the fact that as a culture, we decided to move our kitchens outdoors. Who cleans these monsters? Can the average backyard chef even use many of the bells and whistles they have bolted onto the side of the modern grill?

Suddenly it was very easy to move away from gas to lump charcoal.

In short order I was on the way home with a charcoal grill that should capture the attention to anyone who desires a grill for their back yard. With a few hours to go and the help of my wife we had the new grill set up and smoldering at 210 degrees within 90 minutes.

The risks were great; a new tool, a new heat source and 15 hungry people at my house.

Much like with the Apple, moving from gas to charcoal and wood just works out of the box if you’ve planned your moves ahead of time. The grill is large enough to lay out 3 or 4 racks of ribs to smoke over indirect heat. Maintaining a consistent temperature is easy as well, the grill has a door on the front for easy access to a tray holding your heat source. This tray can be raised and lowered at will to control the heat and for the production of a sear. A few extra lumps of charcoal and mesquite every 45 minutes is all that is needed to maintain 200 - 220 degrees - the perfect temperature for smoking and barbecuing meats.

After about 4 hours the ribs were done and the grill took 2 full chimney starters of charcoal and mesquite to cook 12 hamburgers, 6 large portobello mushrooms and 6 peppers at one time, easily besting the cooking surface of my previous grill.

For a day that could have gone so very wrong, I was really happy that everything came out so very right. The grill works well, but is not without it’s flaws. Assembly left something to be desired. The handles for the vents are plastic and attached to metal that is to thin for the job asked of them. Both get way to hot compared to the rest of the grill which seems to have a better construction. The fit and finish is a little suspect, the doors don’t sit right and the hood pops a little when the grill heats up before it sits on the grill surface. On the plus side the unit has heavy cast iron grates for searing and the process of cleaning ash has been well thought out. All things being equal, not a bad tool for around 200.00.

What follows in a photoessay for some impromptu baby back ribs, planned for a gas grill but smoked over lump charcoal and apple and mesquite wood chunks. This is a 2 day process that begins at your local butcher and can be applied to baby back / spare or St. Louis style ribs.

Day 1

1. Have your butcher remove the skin from the underside of the ribs or remove with a flexible knife at home. (This is a must. Any good butcher will perform this task upon request - if you can find a good butcher)

2. In a deep Pyrex dish or large Zip-lock bag, lay out the ribs and cover with pineapple juice. I soaked these ribs for about 8 hours, turning occasionally.

3. After a good soaking, pat the ribs dry, lay over plastic wrap on a large cookie sheet and brush with a mustard of your choosing, then coat liberally with spice rub. I make my own but store bought is fine, just watch the amount of salt in the rub. My rub for these ribs included brown sugar, garlic powder, onion powder, chili pepper, Old Bay, cumin, kosher salt and fresh cracked pepper. Don’t be afraid to use your hands and rub the mixture into the ribs.

4. Cover with plastic wrap and place into the fridge overnight.

Day 2

1. Remove ribs from the fridge at least an hour before you plan on starting, allowing the temperature of the meat to rise. This is a good habit to get into whenever you are cooking meat on a grill.

2. If you are using wood chips, place them in a water bath. I used dry wood for this go around as I didn’t have the time to soak the larger chunks of wood this grill can accommodate. I'm also not sure if its needed with this grill. Only time will tell.

3. Set up your grill for indirect heat and using a thermometer than you know to be calibrated (not necessarily the thermometer on the hood of your grill) let the grill come to rest at about 200 - 220 degrees.

4. Place a shallow tin of water (or liquid of your choosing) over the heat source. I find that this provides enough moisture to help the meat stay moist while it cooks.

5. Place the ribs on the opposite grill from your heat source and close the grill. At this point, the hood should stay down. I restrict opening the hood to once an hour when I rotate the ribs and refill the liquid. On my grill, I have a second door below the heat where I can add a small bit of wood or fuel and I’ve found that this set up allows me to keep the heat in the right part of the grill. Opening the hood lets most of the heat you’ve made escape, and your grill has to work to heat back up once you close it up.

6. For these baby back ribs, I went about 4 hours at 210 degrees. I started brushing the ribs with a wet mop barbeque sauce about 3.5 hours into the cooking process. Any earlier and you risk creating a burned layer of crust on your ribs.

7. After 4 hours I pulled the ribs and cut into 2 bone pieces. In a large mixing bowl I put a fair amount of barbeque sauce and added the ribs, tossing to coat. Make sure you serve with lots of napkins. Enjoy!

Afterthoughts:

These ribs were a cooking adventure and I really did fly by the seat of my pants for the most part. However, they came out with a nice smoke ring and were moist and juicy on the inside. Because of the late start time, I pulled the ribs early so I could get ready for cooking hamburgers and hot dogs. I’m sure they could have gone longer and gotten to the point where the rib bone can be twisted and pulled a bit out of the meat - the falling off the bone stage. Luckily I’m at the beginning of learning how to use this new tool, and my next batch should be even better than these were.

Habanero and Strawberry Bison Filet Mignon

Ingredients List: Grass Fed Free Range Bison Filets (Bowood Farms, Clarksville, MO), (Marinade) Organic Habanero Chili, Organic Strawberry Jam, Organic Shallot, Organic Cranberry Juice, White Vinegar, Organic Canola Oil, Kosher Salt, Pepper (Salad) Organic Yellow Brandywine Tomato, Organic Cucumber, Organic Bi-Color Corn, Olive Oil, Balsamic Vinegar, Kosher Salt, Pepper (Topping) Organic Purple Beauty Bell Pepper, Organic White Onion

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Here in Missouri, we are lucky to have access to grass fed bison at our local grocery and farmers markets. While using bison as a replacement for beef is becoming a bit more common, I still relish plating up thick cuts like New York Strip and Filet Mignon for friends and watching them enjoy this healthy and low fat dish for the first time.

Cooking bison is not as easy or forgiving as beef, and the home cook should plan ahead to ensure success. The biggest issue is bison’s low fat content. Unlike feed lot raised beef and its superior fat marbling, bison is quite lean and prone to drying out if over cooked.

For my habanero and strawberry filet mignon recipe I begin about 8 hours before starting my grill with a marinade of habanero chili, strawberry jam, shallot, white vinegar, canola oil, kosher salt, fresh cracked pepper and cranberry juice. The goal is to infuse a balance of the scorching habanero with the natural sugary sweetness of strawberries and cranberry while adding a bit of moisture to the meat before cooking.

Grilling and heat management play a big part in how your bison will finish. Personally, I prefer my steaks rare to medium rare, so how you approach your bison steaks is of the utmost importance. I use a two zone cooking method, leaving one side of my grill rocket hot to sear each steak, then move to a second zone of very gentle heat to finish the cooking. For bison I’m not looking for the great diamond pattern that I would get on a beef steak, instead, I want to get the best sear I can the first time around then get it off the flame.

I have read that some cooks will leave a bison steak slightly frozen in the center before grilling. While I am sure this will buy you some extra insurance against overcooking your steak, I have not attempted this cooking method. For me, a little planning is all the insurance I feel I need to turn out a perfectly grilled steak.

Total cooking time should be about half to two-thirds that of a beef steak of equal size. On my grill, that’s about a sear on each side for a minute, then about 6 to 7 minutes on indirect heat. You’ll have to give it a try with your equipment as not two flames cook quite the same.

Pre-work:

Before getting to the marinade, a word of caution on the use of habanero, one of the hottest chili peppers available to the home chef. At 200,000 to 300,000 Scoville units, this is a food that should be handled with extreme care and respect. A run in with a jalapeno that I grew several years ago and my contact lenses has made me a firm believer in the use of latex gloves when handling most members of the Capsicum genus. Save for the stem, the entire chili is edible, but the real heat lives in the seeds and rib walls inside the fruit and I usually trim and discard these parts before use - especially if I intend to serve habanero to guests. 

The habanero in this marinade is used to impart heat, but it is nicely complemented by the use of strawberry and cranberry to create a spicy, sweet liquid for the filets to sit in. You can also substitute fruits like peaches or nectarine if they are local and in season. The goal is balance and your options are many.

1. I begin by placing one seeded and de-ribbed habanero, two shallots and three tablespoons of strawberry jam in a food processor or blender. 

2. Add two or three tablespoons of white vinegar, one fourth cup of cranberry juice and two to three tablespoons of canola oil.

3. Salt and pepper to taste.

4. Blend for ten seconds, then check to make ensure all the ingredients have been incorporated into a viscous liquid. Makes enough marinade for two filets.

5. Place filets into a plastic bag, cover with marinade and seal. To ensure the best liquid to meat contact possible, try to remove as much air from the bag before closing. Place the bag in a plastic or glass container and place in your refrigerator. I recommend eight hours, but an overnight rest would be totally acceptable.

Bringing It All Together:

1. Preheat two zone grill as written above.

2. Oil down grill grate to prevent sticking, grill filets to rare/medium rare, per your grilling equipment

3. Remove from heat and rest under tented foil for several minutes before serving.

After Thoughts:

I like to caramelize some onion and bell pepper as a side to complement this steak, perhaps mixed with some roasted habanero for the culinary adventurous. Serve with a side of heirloom tomato and cucumber salad, dressed simply with olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

Enjoy.