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Newsletter for February 2007 Your source for what’s cooking at OBW
25 South Indian Alley Winchester VA, 22601 540-662-1455 |
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It’s hard to believe that another month has flown by and that I need to get this out before heading off to watch the Super Bowl. It’s been a busy month for us. Because January and February are so slow, we tend to roll out a lot of new things then. In addition to trying to close the books on 2006, we’ve launched a bottled water program, reworked the tapas menu, and rolled out a new lunch menu. And for all of you desperately seeking crème brûlée, we offer it on our new dessert menu.
And, cher, it’s Mardi Gras time again! In addition to our regular dinner menu, we are offering a four-course $40 menu on Fat Tuesday, February 20th. Make a reservation please for the special menu so I know how much to prepare.
It’s also time to commit to the White Hall wine dinner on February 22nd. A lot of you have expressed interest, but not too many have reserved. If you’re coming, get your reservation so I can get on with the planning that’s necessary to bring off one of these dinners.
Two other reminders for you. Most of you know that Beth and Gene Nowak of Mayfair Farm grow the bulk of our produce and I see a lot of you at the market. You may not know that Beth has relocated to her former location at the Little Theatre parking lot, corner of Stewart and Boscawen streets. Also, Charlie Fish of Murphy Beverage is organizing a bus trip to the Dogfish Head Ale House in Gaithersburg on March 25. I can’t go, but you know how much I love Dogfish Head ales—they were the star of our spring beer dinner last year.
All my best,
Ed Matthews, Chef/Owner
Every Wednesday is Tapas Night Each Wednesday night, we serve tapas from 5:00pm to 9:00pm. Tapas are small, fun dishes, designed so that you and your friends can try and share a range of foods. Last week we featured 25 dishes, of which 7 were vegetarian. My favorite tapa was Pulled Rabbit in Porcini Sauce.
Wednesday, February 14, Special Valentine’s Menu As every year, we offer a wonderful four-course prix fixe menu for Valentine’s Day. I must be crazy to offer this much food for only $60 per person. You must reserve by credit card. Half of our tables are already booked, the rest will go this week. Call now if you’re coming.
Tuesday, February 20, Special Mardi Gras Menu We celebrate Fat Tuesday with a special Mardi Gras menu (as well as our standard dinner menu). Duck Gumbo, Shrimp Rémoulade, Pecan-Crusted Rainbow Trout with Sauce Meunière on Dirty Rice, Bananas Foster Bread Pudding with Rum Sauce, $40 (now that’s a bargain!).
Thursday, February 22, White Hall Vineyards Dinner Vintage after vintage, the wines from White Hall Vineyards, just west of Charlottesville, keep impressing me. White Hall winemaker Mike Panczak will host the dinner featuring his Pinot Gris, Viognier, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot, and Edichi Port-style wine. Call 1-540-662-1455 to reserve by credit card.
Thursday, March 22, Annual Spring Beer Dinner Featuring the Foods of New Mexico Northern Sonoran Desert cuisine is incredible: if you’ve eaten in New Mexico, you know what I’m talking about. It’s not Tex and it’s not Mex: it’s a whole other beast. And, there’s nothing better to wash down New Mexican cooking than a good cold beer.
Thursday, April 26, Annual Spring Garlic Dinner It wouldn’t be One Block West cooking without garlic and at this dinner, we celebrate garlic in all its glory. Last year’s dinner was the first and was so popular that we’re doing it all over again. Book early. We’ll have a blast, guaranteed.
On Tuesday January 16, we rolled out our new winter lunch menu. If you haven’t been to lunch in a while, come check out the changes. In response to customer requests for more appetizers, we have added steamed mussels and a bruschetta of the day.
After much brainstorming, we added lamb kebabs as an entrée and as a topping for our ever popular Greek salad and they’re selling like crazy—very gratifying. Rainbow trout replaces salmon. We added two additional frittate to the menu, one a Greek-style frittata modeled on our Greek shrimp entrée and the other a wild mushroom and Brie cheese frittata.
We also spent two weeks reinventing our Caesar salad, partly to create a unique One Block West salad, but mainly to create a salad matching the quality of the rest of the menu. We tasted our own dressing alongside recipes from The Greenbrier and The Culinary Institute of America and seven commercially available dressings. We’ve developed a new dressing that combines the best qualities of all of these dressings and which most closely resembles what we think an ideal Caesar dressing should be. The end result is a beautifully presented salad with marinated tomatoes, marinated white anchovies (boquerones), grated pecorino romano cheese, and grilled garlic bread sticks.
Sadly, after four years, we say farewell to latkes: we dropped them for want of sales.
It took me years of searching, but I finally got a good source of walleye, arguably (I’m on the yea side) the best tasting freshwater fish in North America. The walleye (Sander vitreus vitreus) is native to Canada and the northern US. When it arrives at the restaurant, I see various sources of origin on the boxes: Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Minnesota, etc. If you’ve been to Europe, maybe you’ve eaten its cousin the Sander, Zander, or Sandre, also an excellent fish.
The fish itself is quite handsome, olive drab on top shading to a gorgeous gold (hence the French Canadian name doré or golden) with a white belly. This in itself would make it handsome enough, but the walleye also has five darker green saddles or scallops that run down its long, lean flanks. The sharp teeth in its large mouth confirm its role as predator. The walleye looks a good bit like its very close couse the sauger, except that the bottom of the lower of the two tail lobes in the walleye is white.
All the authorities say that the walleye is named for its eye that, like a cat’s eye, has a reflective layer of pigment that helps it feed at night or in deep or murky water. I still don’t get the connection with wall—why isn’t called a cateye?
Nomeclature aside, the fish has amazing flavor and texture. Imagine a snow white, firm textured, sweet and nutty fish and you have imagined walleye. I have found that walleye, like the sweet and nutty trout, wants a simple preparation that lets it flavor shine through. I have also found that walleye and lime butter is an inspired combination, which is mostly how we serve it at the restaurant.
The only drawback—it’s a bony rascal and it takes me a long time to debone each fish. But the result is definitely worth the labor. Come try some.
Every time I mention how lousy our water tastes, chlorinated all the time, algal in the summer, the reply from Public Utilities is that it passes all the EPA tests and mumbo-jumbo about turbidity and VOCs. Quantitative tests are certainly necessary, but at the end of the day, there’s a lot to be said for the ultimate qualitative test—How does it taste?
My job in a steaming hot kitchen causes me to drink gallons of water a day and I am tired of drinking nasty tasting water, so I have added four bottled waters that I really like to our cooler. Now our customers also have a choice of water as well. The waters that we have added are:
Badoit, the best selling sparkling water in France, very lightly effervescent, good minerality Fiji, still artesian water from Fiji, very soft and easy drinking San Benedetto, sparkling from Italy, clean and much better than Pellegrino Volvic, my choice of still water when I’m in France, good minerality
Update, March 2008: our distributor dropped Badoit and Volvic for want of sales. Too bad.
Recipe: Yiouvetsi
Of all the dishes that customers loved at our lamb dinner in January honoring the hard work of our lamb supplier Virginia Lamb, this one is probably the easiest for home cooks to attempt. Yiouvetsi, like terrine, is a dish that has come to be named after the pot in which it is cooked. A yiouvetsi is a clay pot, often with a lid, that comes in various sizes from individual to gigantic. At home, I make this dish in a covered Le Creuset cast iron cocotte; at work, in our gigantic stainless steel braising pan. Use any heavy braising pan, Dutch oven, or clay pot that you happen to have.
2 lb cubed lamb stew meat (shoulder or leg) 8 cloves garlic, minced 2 T fresh oregano, minced 4 lemons, juiced ½ c extra virgin olive oil 1 t salt ½ t black pepper 1 large onion, diced 2 large cans of diced tomatoes (28oz) or 4 lb fresh tomatoes, peeled and diced 3 pints water 1 lb orzo 1 c feta cheese, crumbled
At least an hour and preferably the night before cooking this dish, marinate the lamb by combining it with the garlic, oregano, lemon juice, and olive oil in a non-reactive dish. Cover and refrigerate. When you’re ready to cook, heat your oven to low, 250-300F. Then add the lamb, salt, pepper, onion, tomatoes, and water to your braising pan. If your braising pan can be heated over direct flames, you can give it a head-start by heating to a boil before putting it in the oven. Place the covered pan in the oven and cook gently until the lamb is tender.
This will take from an hour to two, depending on the size of the cubes and how hot your oven is. Check it every 20 minutes or so to make sure that the liquid does not dry out. Once the lamb is cooked, add the orzo, stir well, and return the covered dish to the oven for another fifteen minutes or until the orzo is cooked. This dish is about flavor and texture. The orzo will have absorbed all the liquid and should taste of lemon and lamb and should be silky and slick from the olive oil. I often add more lemon juice, olive oil, and salt to my liking once the orzo is cooked.
For final service, I like to transfer the yiouvetsi to individual ramekins, top with a sprinkling of feta cheese, and place in a hot oven to re-warm and to brown the cheese.
We offer boquerones, marinated anchovies fairly regularly on our Wednesday night tapas menus as well as on our Caesar salads. Boquerones are fresh anchovies that have been pickled in vinegar and then marinated in olive oil, garlic, and herbs. Also known as anchoas en vinagre in Spanish and alici in Italian, these anchovies are bleached white from the vinegar, soft, supple, mild, and not at all salty, unlike salted anchovies that you’re used to on cheap pizza. Boquerones are a delicacy that reminds me of pickled mackerel, saba, prepared by a good sushi chef, or perhaps of pickled herring.
We’re in the winter slow season now. It’s a time when we get a lot done other than cooking. Trust me, we’d rather be cooking, so come let us cook for you. A lot of you have told me that you really want to try out our tapas menu on a Wednesday night. What are you waiting for?
Also, this is the season when I start my serious tasting for the wine list for the year. I’ve already brought on several new Virginia reds such as Rockbridge Pinot Noir and White Hall Petit Verdot. And, I’ve started my search for Amarone, Barbaresco, Torrontes, sparkling Shiraz, and spring rosés. Come see what I find.
All my best and come see us when you can,
Ed
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Copyright © 2007 Shenandoah Food and Beverage Holdings, LLC sensational seasonal cuisine and the W logo are trademarks of Shenandoah Food and Beverage Holdings, LLC. |
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