Foodies In My Family

Bear with me on this post – it’s a whole bunch of personal information as an excuse to run a photo of a very famous food guy. (Go ahead. Scroll to the bottom. I’ll wait.)

While I profess to be opinionated about food, I would never declare myself an expert on food. I don’t know everything there is to know about food, but I do know what I like, and have been exposed to some mighty good food since I’ve set foot on this earth. I have my family to thank for that. They’re all foodies, in a sense.

My mother’s parents were farmers – not the kind that grows a thousand acres of corn as a commercial commodity, but they were farmers in the more traditional sense. They grew a plot of tomatoes, a plot of corn, a plot of butter beans, and a plot of cucumbers destined for the local farmer’s market and the local folk's bellies.

My mother is an excellent cook. We ate a home-cooked meal every night, and school lunches came in brown paper bags packed with love by mom. When I was younger, the only time I set foot in a fast food restaurant was on school field trips when the bus pulled in to McDonalds – how pathetic of the schools. Of course, I’m not that sheltered; I was later acquainted with fast food restaurants in high school when I started getting out on my own.

My mom taught me how to cook by letting me stick to her side and help her in the kitchen; I was the pot stirrer, the cheese grater, the bean sheller, and, of course, the brownie bowl licker. Thank you so much, mom, for feeding me wholesome, delicious love cooked up every night.Granddaddy chefs it up while I keep his chair warm

My father’s parents were city folk. My granddad was the chef while he was in the Coast Guard; they asked who could make biscuits and gravy, and he raised his hand. Later, he sold restaurant equipment and designed commercial kitchens. I remember sitting at his drafting table, unrolling blueprints of the interior of restaurants and gazing at all the circles and squares.

Granddaddy was also famous for his catfish stew and hushpuppies, which were not only requested at home, but at large events where he would lord over the stew in a huge, cast iron cauldron set over a flame. My granddad taught me to skin a catfish (this requires nailing the fish to a tree and pulling the skin off with pliers) and pull molasses candy (Granddaddy had a fierce sweet tooth).

My sister has worked in the gourmet food industry since she was sixteen. She started at a retail gourmet food and wine store, and over the years has been a personal chef and a pastry chef. She even made the cover of the Chicago paper many years ago with a soup inspired by my Granddad, and has dined with the likes of John T. Edge. She currently is a wine and cheese buyer for a Southeastern competitor of Whole Foods . She’s has lived and breathed food since she was a teenager, and when she has her game on is quite the little food snob.

My brother has worked in the food industry most of his life, too, but as a server in restaurants. Don’t take serving lightly. Many are truly professionals in this field, and he was one of them. Unfortunately, you won’t be served by him any more. A life changing event led him to pick up and pursue his dream of sailing. Godspeed.

My dad is, the only way to put it, a wine and food connoisseur. We might have been the only family in our neighborhood that had a wine cellar back in the 1970’s. We might have also been the only family with a dad that kept the “good” chocolate locked in a safe (shit you not), so that the kids didn’t eat it all.

My dad is very opinionated, and it must have been from him that I learned to critique food. To everyone’s embarrassment at the table, he never hesitates to send food back at a restaurant and loudly voice what is wrong with the food and how it should properly be prepared.

My dad also has some weird talent or personality trait that I was not born with which enables him to envision, organize, and create festivals – I’m talking large festivals that thousands of people attend. This has been going on since I was a child, and embarrassingly leads to pictures of your dad in papers. He currently is the founder and president of the South Carolina Barbeque Association, a very serious association that does not take barbeque (ussage: noun, specifically pork; and transitive verb, "barbecued") lightly, and sentences like, “I have discussed going to all butts as opposed to whole hog and butt” are not a joke. Of course , he created a barbeque festival, and disseminates his trained troops to smaller festivals throughout the state. Anthony Bourdain, his camera person, and my Dad.

So, this all leads to the picture of Anthony Bourdain and my Father. The fourth season of Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations begins July 30th, and my dad was filmed for a segment on the South Carolina episode coming up this fall. Being the go-to barbeque guy in South Carolina, my dad hooked Tony up with some real barbeque and schooled him on the way it’s done. My dad had a blast that day, and said Tony was down to earth, polite, funny, and an all and all nice guy – contrary to what you might imagine him like from his sarcastic side seen on TV and in his books. And, yes, he does smoke that much.
God knows what potentially embarrassing thing my Dad just said?

I can’t wait to see what snarky comments Tony edits in if my Dad makes it into the final cut. You guys will have to tell me about it (tape it), since the Travel Channel is not one of the one hundred cable channels I pay obscene amounts of money for.

So, that’s my family, and why I am the way I am. Sue them, not me.

Roasted Grapes

Well, I’ve got more grapes hanging around here after the harvest last week. Besides make grape pie, I wanted to roast grapes – all new things to me. I saw an article in a newsletter that mentioned roasted grapes as an accompaniment for cheese – just toss grapes with vinegar and roast for fifteen minutes. I can do that.

Of course, I took it a bit further. I had six types of vinegar in my pantry: rice vinegar, ginger infused rice vinegar, cider vinegar, red wine vinegar, white balsamic vinegar, and strawberry infused balsamic vinegar. (Some cooks take hits from extract bottles, I take hits from vinegar bottles; I like vinegar so much.) It turns out that it really doesn’t matter what vinegar you use; the differences are subtle. Just use what ever vinegar you have.

After fifteen minutes of roasting in the oven, the grapes soften, release juices, and caramelize a bit. The homegrown grapes I was using were very tart, so these roasted homegrown grapes mixed with vinegar were too tangy for most people to handle.

This ain’t gonna work! I reached in the fridge and pulled out the store bought green grapes I bought before the grape harvest came in. (Yep, it’s grapey over at my house.) I tried it all over again with store bought green grapes. Much better. These grapes ended up being sweet and only slightly tangy from the vinegar. These guys can go on a cheese plate without arresting your taste buds.

Roasted Grapes

1 bunch of grapes
a few tablespoons vinegar (your choice)

• Wash and dry grapes.
• Toss grapes with vinegar in a bowl.
• Place grapes in an ovenproof dish or on a baking sheet, and cook in a preheated 450°oven for 15 minutes.

Green Grape Pie

Growing good-looking grapes is not easy. As with most fruit crops, grapes need loads of chemicals sprayed on their foliage and fruit throughout the growing season in order to get anything you would even consider sticking in your mouth. (That’s why grapes are high on the list of foods with residual pesticide.) Organic or non-organic pesticide (go argue amongst yourselves), thin-skinned table grapes need pesticide if you want to be rewarded by fruit.

Efforts have paid off, and we managed to salvage about fifty percent of the fruit growing from two Lakemont grape vines growing on a pergola with a minimal, but regimented, spray program. Previous years had very low percentages (lucky to get a handful), so I was quite pleased to take home a heavy plastic grocery sack of grapes. My partner took home a bag, too, as well as the not so pretty grapes, which were crushed to make grape juice.

I knew exactly what I wanted to do with my bounty of grapes – make grape pie! I know. WTF? I’ve never eaten grape pie, much less heard of it, until I saw it on some show somewhere (Food Network, god bless 'em) and thought, “Gotta try that sometime.” Well, the time has come. And gone. As has the pie. I ate it in two days. I’m quite efficient.

I would have to say that my favorite fruit pie is cherry, but after eating this grape pie, I questioned the ranking order of my fruit pies. Grapes are round and cook down like cherries, and, if you had blindfolded me, I might have guessed this pie was a tart cherry pie.

This grape pie was tart due to the fact that these homegrown grapes were tarter than store bought grapes, but these fresh grapes were not tart to the point of making your face squench up. I’m not sure what a pie made from store bought grapes would taste like, but I’m guessing good, as there are plenty of recipes out there for green or red grape pies.

This pie is not the prettiest thing I’ve made. Make grape pie and serve it to your family; buy some puff pastry and make grape tarts to serve to your friends. Your family already knows you’re a screw-up, but you’ve worked too hard making your friends believe you’re perfect, so make pretty little tarts to impress the friends. Give it a go. Try something new. Your disillusioned friends will think you’re a genius.

Green Grape Pie

2 pie crusts
7 cups green grapes
1 1/2 cups sugar (adjust according to sweetness of grapes)
zest from 1 lemon
1/8 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons cornstarch
2 tablespoons butter

• Crush 3/4 cup of the green grapes in a saucepan.
• Add remaining grapes, sugar, lemon zest, salt, and cornstarch to the crushed grapes.
• Heat fruit on stove, stirring occasionally until the juice has thickened.
• Fill pie crust with fruit. If there is excess juice, use a slotted spoon to transfer the fruit, so the pie will not be a wet mess.
• Place pats of butter on top of pie.
  
• Top pie with the second crust, crimp pie edges, and cut slits in the top of the pie.
• Place pie on a foil-lined baking sheet to avoid cleaning headaches.
• Bake in a preheated 425° oven for 30 minutes or until golden brown.

Chick's

With so many wine bars in Philly, how does one choose? While I have been to a handful, I have not been to all. Eager to try more, I took a recent article in the Philadelphia Weekly that featured wine bars, nixed those I had been to, then chose what seemed to be the least pretentious establishment and closest wine bar to my Philly digs – ‘cause walking is the only way to travel when drinking.

We chose Chick’s, a small bar on the corner of 7^th St. and Kater St. just off the path from busy South St. in Bella Vista. The interior is very charming with its cozy, dark bar and tin tile ceiling, but the weather was absolutely perfect, so we dined outdoors. The wine list obviously is the star at a wine bar, but I had been drinking mixed drinks previously, so did not feel like following up with a heavy red wine. I chose a Prosecco to keep that light, bubbly feeling afloat. My partner started with the house Pinot Noir just the see if the house wine was up to snuff. The house Pinot Noir was fine, but he decided on a fuller, heavier Grenache with the recommendation of the server.

I started with the roasted beets, goat cheese, and mache listed under the vegetable small plates section of the menu. I’m rarely disappointed with beets, and this dish was no exception. The beets were perfectly tangy from vinegar and complimented by the creamy, mild goat cheese. This small plate was not minuscule like some small plates at wine and tapas bars, but perfectly portioned.

The Taleggio cheese plate came with plenty of bread, although I would have liked to see the cheese paired with cherries or some other accompaniment.

The Gorgonzola and fig flat bread was the star of the table. You just can’t beat the classic pairing of fig and Gorgonzola cheese. Again, the portions were substantial, and thank goodness, because we wanted all of it.

The brie, pear, and onion marmalade panini had my name on it, as one of my favorite sandwich spreads in onion jelly or onion chutney. I was disappointed with the panini. The sandwich could have used a little more brie and pear to balance out all that bread, which was the most perfectly crisp panini I’ve ever had. Mostly I was disappointed with the onion marmalade. The sandwich contained what appeared to be caramelized red onions that were slightly bitter, not a sweet onion marmalade. Again, this sandwich was another example of sauce (or absence of sauce) making or breaking a sandwich. The panini came on top of a stack of skinny fries which were the crunchiest, happiest skinny fries I’ve ever had, unlike the floppy, sad skinny fries I usually run into.

We were stuffed, but had to try dessert. The attentive, but unobtrusive server recommended the dark chocolate crème brulee. The crème brulee was not as rich and thick as some crème brulees I’ve had, but that was not a concern. The dessert was fabulous, and the caramelized bananas on top were the pièce de rèsistance.

The price and pretension at Chick's is low, and the quality and service is high. I can get behind that.

Chick’s Café and Wine Bar, 614 S 7th St, Philadelphia 19147
Phone: 215-625-3700

Chocolate Hazelnut Ice Cream

I’m jumping with uncontained excitement about the announcement that I’M GETTING MARRIED…to my ice cream maker. It’ll be a summer wedding, of course. Oh, man, do I love that little machine. I plug him in and we do the electric ice cream boogaloo all the time. I just can’t get enough of him. That’s why we’re getting married. I’m ready to commit.

Yeah, I’ve had ice cream machines before, but they were those big machines that require ice and rock salt. Too high maintenance for me. My little guy needs none of that. Just pop his hot, sleek bod in the freezer overnight to chill and were raring to go.

Anything he touches is soo much better. Smoothie? Freeze it. Juice? Freeze it. Yogurt? Freeze it. That’s how I can love him so much and not get fat. But about once a month we have a “special” night where we make full-fat ice cream. It’s sinful, but oh so good.

We finally got around to making the hazelnut ice cream that was supposed to be my “first.” It’s yummy and very rich. I’m so glad I waited. Well, I couldn’t wait ‘til marriage, but I waited long enough.

I tried as hard as I could to follow the directions in David Lebovitz’s ice cream book, The Perfect Scoop, but it just didn’t happen. I forgot to buy milk chocolate at the store, so used dark chocolate I had on hand. I also tried to make the recipe just slightly less indulgent by subbing non-fat milk for whole milk, and reducing the eggs by one. (It was still so rich that I thought I was going to go into cardiac arrest.) I also couldn’t waste all the hazelnuts that impart the hazelnutty flavor to the custard, so threw in a few tablespoons towards the end of the churning for crunchy little nut bits.

Chocolate Hazelnut Ice Cream
Adapted from The Perfect Scoop by David Levovitz
Makes about 1 quart

1 ½ cups hazelnuts, toasted
1 cup non-fat milk
2 cups heavy cream
¾ cup sugar
¼ teaspoon coarse salt
4 ounces dark chocolate, chips or finely chopped
4 egg yolks
1/8 teaspoon vanilla extract

• Toast hazelnuts in a single layer on a baking sheet in the oven for 12 minutes at 350°, turning half way through. Cool nuts. (ha ha) Rub nuts (hee hee) in a dish towel to remove the skins, then chop finely in a food processor or blender.
• Combine milk with 1 cup of the cream, sugar, and salt in a pan over medium heat. Once warm, add the chopped hazelnuts and remove from the heat. Cover and let steep for 1 hour.
• Heat remaining 1 cup of cream in a pan on the stove until it just begins to boil. Pour the hot cream over the chocolate pieces, and stir until the chocolate is melted and smooth.Pour the hazelnut-infused milk through a strainer or cheesecloth into a pan, squeezing all the liquid from the nuts. Save 3 or 4 tablespoons of the hazelnuts to add to the ice cream.
• Rewarm the hazelnut-infused milk. In a separate bowl, whisk the egg yolks. Slowly pour the warm hazelnut-infused milk into the egg yolks, whisking constantly.
• Stir the egg and milk mixture over medium heat, making sure to scrape the bottom as you stir, until the mixture thickens into custard. Pour the custard into the chocolate mixture, add the vanilla and stir until cool over an ice bath.
• Chill the mixture in the refrigerator, then freeze in your ice cream maker. Add the reserved chopped hazelnuts to the ice cream a few minutes before it is ready.

Sazon

I’ve been meaning to get to Sazon, Philly’s only Venezuelan restaurant, for some time now. I heard that they had a vegetarian friendly menu, and was curious about the exotic cuisine.

Sazon sits on that uninviting hodgepodge strip of Spring Garden around ninth and tenth streets that includes restaurants and gun stores. Duck in off the street and enter Sazon, a time machine back to a diner decked out in brown booths and a counter with swivel stools. I was seated in a brown booth where I was unable to take my eyes off a hilariously intriguing painting of a smiling woman I imagined was Patti LaBelle popping out of tropical foliage.* Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?

They must have seen me coming, because right when we sat down they dimmed the lights, making picture quality quite poor. Gonna keep these beauties small. Sorry.

We started drinking a white wine we brought along (Sazon is BYOB) and ordered the sampler appetizer plate with empanada, arepas, and tequenos accompanied by a tomato salsa. These appetizers came out more fried and greasy than I had expected. The wine must have been working because I’m normally pissy when I have to eat fried appetizers. I was quite happy to eat the fried teqenos (a glorified mozzarella stick), and the cheese and bean stuffed arepas and empanada. Full size arepas and empanadas stuffed with various meat and non-meat fillings can also be ordered.

I ordered the dinner plate of grilled tofu mixed with portabellas, seasoned with tomato salsa, and served with brown rice and black beans. I substituted white rice (just because I’m a vegetarian doesn’t mean I'm some health nut), and requested sweet plantains, too. I was a little unimpressed with the menu description, but was pleasantly surprised by the tofu, portabella, and tomato mixture that resembled a ragout. This mixture was very flavorful and not spicy at all. In fact, nothing we ate that night was spicy. Venezuelan food at Sazon is mild, simple, home cooking. When you eat black beans, you taste black beans; not a mouthful of coriander and cumin.

My partner ordered the tilapia special that came with an avocado salad and fried green plantains. He said the fish was cooked perfectly.

For dessert, the server recommended the coconut flan. While I’m iffy on flan (this saying, apparently, is quite funny after a bottle of wine), my partner likes flan. We went with the recommendation. The dessert was a mash up of a coconut macaroon and flan. I enjoyed this much more than traditional flan, but my partner would have probably enjoyed the traditional flan more.

Sazon is very affordable, thanks in part to the fact that you’re saving money on drinks by bringing your own. We got out of there for under $50, and $23 of that bill was the fish special. At those prices (not the fish special), I want to go back and try the full size arepas and empanadas, or maybe the weekend brunch. Gitchi Gitchi Ya Ya Da Da!

* Some people (comments deleted) are getting worked up over this comment, so I'll explain. I have since discovered that the picture is of Celia Cruz, a salsa singer. While I did not know at the time who the picture was of, I also did not believe the picture was of Patti LaBelle. I merely found humor in imagining (operative word) Patti Labelle popping out of tropical foliage singing a silly song. Can't a girl drink a bottle of wine and have a little fun?

Sazon, 941 Spring Garden St., Philadelphia, PA 19123
215-763-2500
Tues.-Wed, 11a.m-3pm, 5:30p.m.-9p.m.; Thurs. 11a.m.-3p.m., 5:30p.m.-10p.m.; Fri., 11a.m.-3p.m., 5:30p.m.-11p.m.; Sat., 11a.m.-11p.m; Sun., 11a.m.-8p.m.; Saturday and Sunday brunch, 11a.m.-3p.m.

Philadelphia Urban Farms Bike Tour

Mill Creek Farms' mosaicked shed

This weekend I forwent my normal weekend bike ride and participated in a bike tour of urban farms in Philadelphia organized by Weaver’s Way Coop. The bike tour coincided with the passing through of a group from Washington DC that is touring urban farms in the Northeast via bike and documenting their experience. I learned about the ride at Straight from the Farm, a blog written by a volunteer at Weaver’s Way Farm who shares timely and tasty recipes for produce that is in season.Weaver's Way Co-op Farm

We started the morning at Weaver’s Way Co-op Farm, a one and a half acre, non-certified organic farm located on Awbury Arboretum in East Mt. Airy that supplies produce and flowers to the Weaver’s Way Co-op.

We then booked it over to visit Mill Creek Farm, a collectively run urban education garden on the site of previous vacant land in West Philadelphia that is devoted to sustainable living and the immediate community.Jade, co-founder of Mill Creek Farm, standing on the living roof of their cobbed shed.

Calendula and tomatoes at Mill Creek Farm

A quick stop was made at the Spring Garden community garden in Fairmount, one of the most beautiful of Philly’s many community gardens, just beyond the shadows of downtown Philadelphia. Residents in the area tend plots filled with ornamentals and vegetables which they bring home and donate to local charities.

Downtown Philly towering over Spring Garden community gardens

Perennials and vegetables co-mingle in a Spring Garden plot

A quick ride over to Fishtown and we arrived at Greensgrow Farms, an operation that sells produce grown in greenhouses on the site of an old galvanized steel plant to local restaurants and the community. Greensgrow is also one of the only nurseries supplying ornamentals accessible to those in the heart of Philadelphia.
Greensgrow Farms

The tour ended a few blocks away at Yards Brewery, where “Beer is the answer,” but if you read this blog you know that beer is never my answer. (It’s a shame Philly doesn’t have a vodka brewery.) A quick peek inside at the facilities and a break in their bar area with a beautiful high timbered ceiling, and I was ready for lunch.

Really?

Missed the bike ride, but still want a tour? There's a very similar tour during the Buy Fresh Buy Local week that takes off over at White Dog Cafe on Saturday, July 21.