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Newsletter for November 2005 Your source for what’s cooking at OBW
25 South Indian Alley Winchester VA, 22601 540-662-1455 |
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Wow! The weather turned cold and wet in a hurry this year! With the change in weather came a revamping of the lunch menu to bring back the Duck Confit Salad that was so popular last winter, the introduction of Four-Cheese Tortellini in a Cream Sauce with Smoked Salmon and Dill, and several other changes. On the dinner front, Roasted Rack of Venison with Potato-Bacon Cake, Sautéed Chanterelles, and Sautéed Spinach has been a popular seller. Wild mushroom sales have been tremendous.
October saw a demonstration of cooking heirloom and somewhat forgotten vegetables at Blandy Farm for Arborfest, including leeks and butternut squash. And it saw our 2nd annual beer dinner which proved more popular than many of our wine dinners. This dinner spawned Caramelized Onion and Bacon Compote, a sure winner of a dish if there ever was one.
November will see an Argentinean wine dinner mid month and I am reprising my holiday appetizer fundraiser the Sunday before Thanksgiving. Naturally, we’ll be closed on Thanksgiving Day, but open as usual on Friday and Saturday after. November also marks the arrival of Mad Elf, an exquisite holiday ale from our beer supplier, Tröegs Brewery.
I love charcuterie and now that the weather has changed, I have had several requests to provide pâtés, terrines, ballotines, and galantines to customers and other caterers. If you need a special dish for a holiday party, I may be able to help. I have very limited production capacity and these dishes are naturally very expensive to make, but very impressive on the table.
Also, our wine list has grown to the point where only the by-the-glass list will still fit in the menus. At last count, we were pouring about 85 wines by the glass. When you visit now, you will also get a separate wine list that shows all the wines we have, organized traditionally by geographical region. In recent weeks we’ve added Puligny-Montrachet, Gevrey-Chambertin, Chablis Valmur, and Brunello Riserva to beef up our list.
I hope you enjoy this edition of the newsletter and please come see us when you can. I’d love to cook for you.
Ed Matthews, Chef/Owner
Sunday November 20, Holiday Appetizers, 2-4pm Come kick off the holiday season on the Sunday before Thanksgiving by joining your neighbors at my house in a fundraiser for Faith in Action, a local non-profit caregiving organization. We’ll make (and eat!) a lot of holiday appetizers and hors d’oeuvres that you can use in your holiday entertaining. I’m donating all the food and beverages, so every penny of your $150 per person donation goes directly to FIA. Call the restaurant at 540-662-1455 to reserve your spot.
Wednesday, November 30, 6:30pm, Argentinean Wine Dinner We’re meeting this week with Kysela Père et Fils to put together plans for this dinner featuring the new wines that Fran has found in Argentina. I will send a separate email when we firm up details. As always, limited to 24 people and reservations by credit card.
I am very pleased that many of you love mushrooms. This lets me feature many exotic mushrooms and also lets me buy and learn how to cook kinds of mushrooms that I have never worked with before. You know that spring brings morels, which I love to sauté and finish with thyme, cream, and country ham. Late summer sees the first flush of golden chanterelles and they really hit their stride in October. You may have noticed your veal chops smothered in chanterelles recently. From time to time, we are offered fresh porcini which tend to end up sliced on top of porcini risotto, made from dried porcini. Drying really concentrates the flavor. We also have trumpets de mort (black trumpets), beech mushrooms (hon-shimeji), hedgehogs, and royal trumpets when we can get them. Although not mushrooms, we also get a rare truffle or two. Truffles should be arriving in the next week or so.
This week I encountered Cauliflower Mushrooms for the first time when my specialty buyer called to offer five pounds of this large (2-1/2 pounds apiece!), pasta-colored, cauliflower-shaped, very rare mushroom from Washington State. They smell very woodsy, almost piney and when broken apart and cleaned of moss and fir needles, they resemble small ruffled egg pasta. The first thing we did was sauté them in clarified butter with shallots. The flavor was outstanding, a bit earthy and a bit piney, just very woodsy. Since they so resembled egg pasta in shape and texture, I decided that my favorite treatment for fresh egg pasta would be just the trick for the mushrooms. We sauté them as mentioned and then finish them with a splash of highly concentrated veal stock. Dynamite! I still have a very few servings left. If you want to try them, call now and reserve a portion for Tuesday or Wednesday night.
Charcuterie (from chair cuit, cooked meat) is that branch of cooking that in modern times embraces sausages, meat pies, terrines, pâtés, galantines, ballotines, and so forth. These are dishes that I love to cook from the humblest Cornish pasty to the most elegant truffled pheasant terrine, and you will see them on the appetizer menu from time to time. Both customers and my staff are very confused about the terminology. They are not alone: most professional chefs have no clue either. Here are some quick definitions to help you negotiate my menus.
Terrine. Named for the dish in which it is cooked (from terre, earth), an earthenware baking dish, a terrine is generally a baked forcemeat (ground meat), literally a meatloaf in a dish. The terrine is chilled, unmolded, and served cold.
Pâté. From pâte (pastry), a pâté is merely a terrine encased in pastry. I am not sure why people think of liver when they think of pâté, for while a few pâtés contain liver, the vast majority does not.
Galantine. A bird (usually chicken, pheasant, or guinea hen) that has been skinned, boned, and then stuffed and rolled back in its skin. The galantine is then poached, covered in an aspic or aspic-based sauce such as a chaudfroid (literally hot-cold: you pour it on hot and it solidifies as the gelatin cools), highly decorated, and served cold.
Ballotine. Generally the same as a galantine, except baked so that the skin browns very prettily and served warm, without further decoration.
We held our second annual beer dinner in conjunction with Murphy Beverage on Wednesday October 26th. I had great fun as I don’t usually cook with beer and I rarely get the opportunity to cook beer drinking food. Here’s a copy of the menu. Maybe you can join us next year.
Arugula Salad with Weiβwurst and Festbier-Whole Grained Mustard Vinaigrette Ayinger Fest-Märzen
Sautéed Potato-Bacon Cake with Caramelized Onion-Bacon Compote Samuel Smith’s Nut Brown Ale
Chile Verde Posole Borracho Fuller’s London Porter
Raspberry Lambic-Chocolate Stout Chocolate Mousse with Amaretti Crumbles and Raspberry Lambic-Infused Whipped Cream Lindeman’s Raspberry Lambic and Young’s Double Chocolate Stout (mixed 40-60)
I demonstrated seven dishes at Blandy Farm for Arborfest 2005 in October, with the aim of showing some new uses for some heirloom vegetables: butternut squash, leeks, and my beautiful Fin de Bagnols heirloom filet beans (haricots verts, French beans). The demonstration was divided into three parts and focused on side dishes to pair with each of three meats: pork, salmon, and redfish.
Apples with Bacon, Thyme, and Honey Butternut Squash with Sage and Brown Sugar Herb-Marinated Pork Loin Chop
Sauté of Haricots Filets Sesame-Crusted Salmon
Creamed Leeks Sautéed Redfish with Porcini Cream
For recipes, click through to the web site.
Recipe: Caramelized Onion-Bacon Compote
This dish that I created as a garnish for our recent beer dinner is so good that you will want to eat it with everything from steaks to hamburgers.
1 lb smoked bacon, sliced into lardons 10 lbs yellow onions, peeled and sliced 1 bottle brown ale
Slice the pound of bacon vertically into ¼” strips (called lardons). In a pan big enough to hold the onions, render the bacon until it is crisp and remove from the pan with a slotted spoon. Add the onions and slowly caramelize, about 45 minutes. Once caramelized, remove to sauce pan and add the bottle of ale and the reserved bacon. Cook down until the beer is evaporated and the onions are very dark brown, skimming off excess bacon grease from time to time. Total cooking time is about 90 minutes.
Each week I get emails asking me about various cooking techniques and/or using ingredients. Every month in the newsletter, I will publish one or two interesting topics. Feel free to send email if there is some technique or ingredient that you need help with.
During my latest demonstration at Blandy Farm, I got quizzed on how to handle various winter squashes. Here are directions for five very common squashes in our area: butternut, acorn, kabocha, small pumpkins, and spaghetti. I prefer to roast squashes to caramelize the sugars, rather than boiling them, even if I am ultimately making soup.
Butternut. Cut the neck off just where the bulbous part starts. Slice the stem off. If the neck is very long (buy the longest necked ones you can find), cut it cross ways into 4-6” lengths. Stand each length up on your cutting board and slice the skin off, all the way around. Cut the base of the bulbous part off and stand it up. Slice the skin off. Cut in half and remove the seeds with a spoon. Cube the squash and roast for best flavor.
Acorn. Because of their shape, acorns are a pain to peel. Don’t both. Cut in half from top to bottom, remove the seeds and roast in the shell. Brush the cut surfaces with oil and place cut side down on your roasting pan. Scoop the flesh out of the shell after roasting.
Kabocha. Sit these and all small squashes whole on a sheet and roast until soft. Cut open, remove seeds, and spoon out the flesh. Ditto for small pumpkins. Use the shells as serving containers. Kabocha squash and porcini risotto served in a whole kabocha is very elegant.
Pumpkins. Roast small ones whole. Cut large ones into chunks, remove the seeds, brush with oil, and roast, then take off the skin. This last technique applies to most big squashes.
Spaghetti. Cut in half longways. Oil the cut side and roast cut side down. Remove seeds with a spoon. String the flesh with a fork (it will be obvious how to do this).
A few reminders:
All my best and come see us when you can,
Ed
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