CT Food

Let’s Hear it for the Pros

It’s nice to have someone remind everyone that there is still room for pros in this business. And, without putting too fine a point on it (and REALLY trying to not be snotty) – some opinions are more valid than others. Even some professional opinions are more valid than others. We all have reviewers we trust and reviewers we take with a grain of salt. (OK – we’re cutting back on salt, so maybe something else.)

For the record – I’ve been somewhere in the food-writing/reporting constellation for more than 15 years. And – I don’t do reviews. Do I like being able to sneak around a bit to see what’s in stores and markets and what people are buying? Yeah. Is it helpful? Yeah. Do people get freaked out when I call them for a story? Yeah. Nature of the beast.

But give this baby a read — it’s by Robert Sietsema in the Columbia Journalism Review – you’ll learn a little thing or two. I did.

The Melville Model

I’m a kind of populist when it comes to food – especially how the media handle it.

Since everybody has to eat, it seems to me media entities would have way more relevancy dealing with food safety and health and affordable meals and real-life food preparation than with insanely expensive restaurants where you can’t get a reservation anyway and even if you could you would be disinclined to eat their, say foie gras.

The worst offender, in my book, is the Food Network. It staggers me that in this day and age it can justify the financial and culinary waste of things like Iron Chef. I find it impossible to watch without thinking about how many people could be fed (like in Haiti right now, let alone all the financially strapped people in our own country) for the cost of the high-end ingredients. And Oh! The waste!

Maybe someone should try a food challenge show to develop healthy meals for schools, or packagable food for emergency situations.

Sometimes you truly need a little reminder of what food’s role in society can be aside from a life necessity. The Melville Charitable Trust has harnessed food as a social change agent in a way that is at once unique and obvious. It seems to be working in their single experiment at Billings Forge in Hartford. The good news is there are lots of inquiries about it and one day you could see this replicated in other places around the nation.

You can read more about it in my story here in The New York Times Metropolitan section.

Post New Year’s Culinary Stew

A stew of food notes is what we’re talking about here.

Wooster Square Market Jan. 16, 2010

The Diehards and Newcomers

CitySeed’s first New Haven market of the winter season (oh thank you for those 45-plus-degrees!) had a hefty showing of the stalwarts on Saturday: Stone Gardens still with Brussels sprouts and some pristine garlic; greens from Starlight and 2 Guys from Woodbridge; Waldingfield Farm had some lovely potatoes.

And of course there were the – essentially — non-seasonal guys: Trinity Farm with the full compliment of milk products and butter! They don’t always have that. Four-Mile-River was happily long on eggs and the various cheese guys had plenty.

And there were some welcome newcomers: Riverbank Farm from Roxbury, an organic grower with a commercial kitchen. So aside from loads of lovely looking carrots and parsnips, they had a large selection of prepared products. Riverbank is no stranger to Westport and Fairfield and a bunch of other markets, but they’re new to Wooster Square.

And an interesting surprise – Skappo restaurant in New Haven, known for Umbrian home-style specialties, also came loaded with soups and such. It’s all going make venturing out on those cold future Saturdays a lot more worth it. Market runs first and third Saturdays of the month at Wooster Square, 10 a.m.-1 p.m.

Warming up in Fairfield

For all the thin-blooded types who have been griping (and believe, me, I’ve heard you) about the winter Fairfield market being outdoors – good news, it’s back indoors. The market is in the Warehouse at the Fairfield Theatre Company, 71 Sanford Street, but had been relegated to the parking lot these last really, really, really cold weeks while repairs were being finished. They’re finished. Market is Saturdays 10 a.m.-2 p.m.

And speaking of FTC – Play with Your Food is back for another season at FTC, as well as in Greenwich and Westport (where it began in 2003). $42 will buy you a catered lunch and readings of one-act plays plus discussion.

Changing Hands

We reported several weeks ago that Arturo Franco-Camacho of Bespoke/Sabor and formerly Roomba in New Haven had two new enterprises planned for Branford. A deal to sell Bespoke/Sabor was underway at the time and was completed as of the end of the year. Bespoke and Sabor have new owners, new chef – all with histories in the Max Group (and elsewhere). Check out the website for the particulars. End of an era for New Haven, but as we reported – the three food carts ain’t going anywhere.

A Little Angst with Your Tarte?

Guess I’m not the only one wringing my lettuce leaves over what I ought to be eating. And the right way to produce whatever it is that I finally DO decide that I ought to be eating. (See my last post)

The L.A. Times laments the shootout over local food versus, well, everything else. Sound familiar?

The New York Times a couple of weeks ago looked a the notions that plants have senses like – gulp — animals, know how to fight off interlopers and in general are truly … alive.

Aw geez – now what do we do?

Here’s the thing everyone seems to be forgetting. Eating ain’t optional. You don’t eat, you die. Now you can be eating organic vegetables only, or you can be eating McDonald’s. Same deal – you don’t eat, you die.

Here’s another thing everyone seems to be forgetting. Fun. Whatever happened to enjoying what you’re eating? Oh that’s right, we’re supposed to eat what’s good for us and things that were produced properly are morally acceptable, etc, etc, etc. What? No one told you it can all be one and the same.

I went to a small dinner party recently. The first course was potato, leek and asparagus soup. There were two torta rusticas made with chard – one with cheese and the other with non-dairy substitutes like soy cheese for the lactose intolerant folks among us (no vegans), broiled swordfish, beets with a touch of orange, a simple green salad served with whole wheat baguettes. And I contributed a pear tarte Tatin for dessert and a quick whipped cream was produced.

But the evening was friendship and catching up and debating (though not solving) all the troubles of the world. Did anyone care that the potatoes, leeks, greens, chard and just about everything else were probably from California via the grocery store and the asparagus pretty much had to be from some other country? Or that swordfish is usually on the top of the worry-about-mercury list? No. Was the meal unhealthy? No.

Culinary pleasures come in many packages, and this one came with people and wine and opinions. And a touch of pear tarte Tatin – featuring precisely zero local ingredients — never hurts. Crust is adapted from Gourmet and the filling from The New York Times many, many years ago.

Pear Tarte Tatin

Crust

1¼ cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoons sugar

¼ teaspoon salt

1 stick cold unsalted butter, cut into ½-inch cubes

3 tablespoons ice water plus more as needed

Whisk together flour, sugar, and salt in a bowl (or pulse in a food processor). Blend in butter with your fingertips or a pastry blender (or pulse) just until most of mixture resembles coarse meal with some roughly pea-size butter lumps. Drizzle ice water over mixture and gently stir with a fork (or pulse) until incorporated.

Squeeze a small handful of dough: If it doesn’t hold together, add more ice water 1 tablespoon at a time, stirring (or pulsing) until just incorporated, then test again. Do not overwork dough, or pastry will be tough.

Turn out dough onto a lightly floured surface and divide into 4 portions. With heel of your hand, smear each portion once or twice in a forward motion to help distribute fat. Gather dough together, with a pastry scraper if you have one, and press into a ball. Form into a disk. Wrap in plastic wrap and chill until firm, at least 1 hour. Dough can be chilled up to 1 day (it will freeze pretty well for a couple of weeks). Let stand at room temperature 20 minutes before rolling out.

Filling

7 firm, red Anjou pears, peeled, halved and cored

Fresh lemon juice

¾ cup sugar

4 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut in small pieces

Crust (above)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Position rack in bottom third of oven. Squeeze lemon juice on pears. Set aside.

Place sugar in a 11-inch cast iron skillet or tarte Tatin pan over low heat. When some of the sugar begins to melt, begin stirring with a wooden spoon until all of the sugar is melted and begins to turn a pale golden color.

Remove pan from the heat. Arrange pear halves in the pan spoke fashion, cut side up, with the narrow end of the pears toward the center, as close together as possible. Fill in the center with the remaining pears.

Scatter butter over the pears. Place pan over medium heat. Cook until the sugar turns a deep caramel color and the juices released from the pears are nearly evaporated, about 20 minutes.

While pears cook, roll the dough into circle about 2 inches larger in diameter than pan. Lift and lay over the pears, tucking the edges into pan around edges of pears. Bake until the crust is golden brown, about 25 to 30 minutes. Remove from oven and set aside for 10 minutes.

Run a small, sharp knife around the edge of the tarte to loosen. Place a large plate or platter over the skillet. Holding the plate and skillet together using 2 kitchen towels, carefully but quickly invert the tarte onto the plate. You may need to do a bit of re-assembling. Cut into wedges and serve with whipped cream or crème fraiche if desired. Eight servings.

More Omnivore Dilemmas – Progress and Stew

I am tired of polemics.

And I am confused. Well, maybe not confused – distressed is more like it. How can so many people be so sure they are right (and everyone else is wrong) about food? How can so many people be considered right about food when our food system is sick and so many of our bodies are sicker?

We don’t know what is right. I don’t know what is right. And lately I have been thinking about arguments for vegetarianism and veganism and where dialectics end and progress begins.

Is it right for a vegan argue it is wrong, cruel, etc, etc to have domesticated cows (OK, they’re all domesticated) when cow (and other) milk is such an incredibly potent foodstuff? And has been for centuries?

Is meat bad in all forms if you consider that prehistoric man ate it? Possibly raw? Meat is not all bad for you and it IS progress that we’re not all out there hunting it on a regular basis. There go ANY gun laws, for starters. Would you rather have time to read a book (OK, OK, watch TV) or spend that time trapping your own dinner?

And my favorite example is this: an organic farmer keeps chickens that help eat the bugs on his farm and thereby minimizes other treatments he might need. The byproduct is, of course eggs. Do we not eat them? They are the result of a beneficial process, and one of the most complete and useful foods on the planet.

Progress means someone who is much better at it than I am can grow, produce, and otherwise supply my food. And dammit – bananas and pineapple make my smoothie a much, much better tasting drink and there’s no way anyone’s growing them around here. Or even in this country.

Progress and bending the locavore sensibility has given us chocolate and coffee and tea and guava and figs and hazelnuts and pignoli or pinon and rice, for goodness sake, and tofu and it lets someone other than me struggle with making pasta (which has eggs in it) and on those rare occasions when I do eat meat, it allows someone else to take care of the dirty work. And it gives me the right to have the wonderful indulgences of a peach tart (aha – sugar and butter, a milk product) and a moist hunk of sour cream coffee cake (eggs, sugar, milk products) and good old French toast. Did I mention Parmigiano- Reggiano? And papayas?

Our system – or lack thereof – of how we make all this work certainly has room for improvement. But you know, generally humankind has benefited from progress in food. Burger King is not what I had in mind, but in a lot of ways, a box of Swanson organic, free range chicken broth is.

A little simplistic? Yes, but I think the ideologues among us would do well to offer a little leeway and grace to those who think about this stuff, but think differently. Or like me, don’t know what the heck to think.

I have no answers – and if polemics (and this crummy cold weather) has you down too – try stew. This version is without meat, but it’s just as good with chicken or lamb.

Stew Braised with North African Spices

Olive oil

I very large onion, quartered and thinly sliced

2 celery stalks, thinly sliced

3-4 large cloves garlic, minced

1½ teaspoons cinnamon

1½ teaspoons turmeric

1 teaspoon sweet paprika

1 teaspoon ginger

1 teaspoon cumin

4 tablespoons tomato paste

3 cups chicken broth (you can use veggie broth – but it’s not my favorite)

1 medium butternut squash, peeled and cut in 1-inch pieces

6 yellow flesh boiling potatoes, cleaned and cut in 1 inch pieces

5-10 medium carrots, peeled and cut in ½-inch rounds

4 medium turnips, peeled and cut in ½-inch pieces

½ cup orange juice

1 orange cut in eighths

Salt and pepper, to taste

1 large can chickpeas, drained

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. On stovetop, heat a large oven-proof Dutch oven over high heat. When it’s hot (a few drops of water will sizzle instantly), pour in enough oil to form a thin film. When oil shimmers – it will happen quickly – add onion, celery and garlic. Turn heat to medium and cook until just softened. Add spices a sauté briefly until aromas are released. Add tomato paste and stir in until evenly distributed. Add broth, stir up all bit from bottom of pan. Add remaining vegetable, orange juice and orange pieces. Mix vegetables. Season with salt and pepper. Cover tightly and place in oven. Braise 1-1½ hours, until vegetables are just soft. Stir in chick peas and cook another 10 minutes. If too soupy, remove lid and let some liquid evaporate. Adjust seasoning. Lots of servings.

*If you want this to be a soup, add more broth. If you want meat stew, brown meat/chicken in oil first. Remove meat and continue with vegetables. Add browned meat to pot before braising.

Think Summer

Stanton-Davis Homestead Dinners at the Farm, Stonington.

The dead of January (and believe me, this January in particular) and we’re talking about Dinners at the Farm? Sounds pretty good to me.

Organizers of these quintessential depth of summer affairs – gourmet, all Connecticut product, mega-multi-course dinners cooked outdoors on…well…a farm – are getting a head start [...]

New Year, Fresh Bread

New year – new resolutions. OK a whole bunch of the same old resolutions. But they’re good resolutions. Downright laudable resolutions. Resolutions I absolutely believe in.

And an awful lot of them have to do with food. Granted, I already run in the semi-elite end of the eating/cooking spectrum, so some might argue I really don’t [...]

Tis the Season for Cookies, Certo

No one really knows why Italian cookies are so popular this time of year. We say, who cares … dig in. Find out where in The New York Times.

Be-Speaking of Branford

Arturo Franco-Camacho doing what he does best.

The man who set the New Haven restaurant scene on its ear when he introduced Nuevo Latino food in 1999 at his (now defunct) restaurant Roomba, and upped the ante three years ago with the upscale Bespoke/Sabor is about to establish a beachhead in that cute little downtown [...]

A Tale of Two Farms

The store shelves at Hindinger Farm are a bit bare at this late date, just a few weeks before it closes for the season. The last of the farm-raised produce consists of acorn and butternut squashes, a lone cabbage or two and a dozen or so different apple varieties – all of them pock-marked by [...]