Transcendental Sandwich

Really Good BBQ Chicken -- Thai Cafe?

2008-07-19T13:50:00.000-07:00

I'm not a BBQ aficionado. I like BBQ, enjoy eating it, but plenty of people like it more. Plenty of people know more. Plenty of people are obsessed with BBQ.

So take this comment with a grain of salt and a dash of vinegar sauce: I had a great piece of BBQ chicken today, in a most unlikely of places: Thai Cafe.

I'd eaten in Thai Cafe before, out in Durham next door to Wine Authorities. I didn't like it very much. I'm not a huge Asian food guy, I'll admit, but I just didn't like it. Didn't think it was very good. Wasn't impressed.

But my girlfriend wanted to go back and try again, and so we did. And for whatever reason, I got the BBQ chicken with shrimp fried rice. (Is that Thai? Who cares.)

There were two pieces - a thigh, which, being dark meat, was tender and juicy and perfect. And a chunk of breast meat that, being white meat, was drier and less flavorful but still pretty good.

If we go back, I'd order this again. It was good. Really good. Damn good. There was a little crispy caramelization on the edges, and a deep smoky flavor. It had been basted with a sweet sauce (not the traditional N.C.-based vinegar sauce). It was tender and perfect and I was truly surprised.

Nothing else we ordered compared with this. A crispy wonton filled with crab meat and cream cheese was ok - a lot of cream cheese, well-fried, but otherwise unexceptional. The pad prik with pork was just standard, neither really good nor bad.

I know there's a long history of Asian BBQ (that is fantastic). But this really didn't seem like it; this seemed like a more traditional American BBQ, which made it all the more strange.

For whatever reason, the BBQ chicken was just freakishly good.

Thai Cafe
2501 University Drive
Durham, N.C.
919-493-9794

Jujube and Chowhound — Not on Speaking Terms?

2008-07-09T07:59:00.000-07:00

If you like good restaurants, and enjoy trying interesting places when you're in a new town, then you probably know the web site Chowhound. They offer a forum of message boards where people can trade recommendations, discuss the newest restaurants, debate the best BBQ, and so on. The forums tend to be casual and easy going, with everyone just looking for a good meal.

But I got an interesting email the other day, and I have no idea what it means.

Responding to someone looking for a good lunch spot in Chapel Hill, I recommended: Sandwich, Panzanella and Jujube. Obviously there are other great restaurants, but I threw those out. Shortly after I made the post, I received this response from a moderator:

Sorry about this, but unfortunately we're not accepting any postings about Jujube at this time. We apologize for the inconvenience. A copy of your post is included below. Would you mind reposting your message without that reference?

I asked for an explanation, but no one responded. Frankly, I find this odd and disturbing — I understand the need for moderators in a public and anonymous forum, but this strikes me as something entirely different. Either Jujube doesn't want to be talked about, and has somehow limited the discussion, or Chowhound is doing this proactively for some bizarre reason. There could be other explanations, of course, but these are the first to come to mind.

Obviously, it's the internet. You have to take everything with a dose of skepticism and assume you're not getting the full story. But I would at least have expected an explanation from Chowhound. They operate a public forum (as "public" as it can be, being privately owned), and I dislike the idea that they are facilitating this.

Perhaps I'll give Jujube a call and see what they say. Very odd, to say the least. If anyone knows what's going on here, I'd love to hear it.

EDIT/UPDATE - A google search goes a long way, it seems: http://durhamfood.wordpress.com/2007/10/18/jujube-chowhound/

That posting includes a comment from Jujube, explaining things from their end. Interesting read, if you're into food and internet forum dramas. Essentially, it seems Chowhound deletes Jujube posts because they believe the restaurant shills on the site. But the owner has been openly defending himself and the restaurant, and it seems the post-deleting has been going on for some time. Very, very odd.

Review of Six Plates

2008-07-07T07:47:00.000-07:00

The key to Six Plates, a relatively new wine bar in Durham, is knowing what it is, and what it is not.

Six Plates is a bar. If that sounds obvious, consider that most "wine bars" are really full-strength restaurants that also have a healthy selection of wine. But Six Plates is different: it's a bar that focuses on wine while it serves some tasty snacks.

There is no table service at Six Plates. They don't take reservations, and no waiter comes to your table. All ordering is done through the bar, off a limited menu (six plates) that changes frequently. It's an interesting concept, and a nice environment with plenty of couches and tables and a modern feel.

On any given night the menu consists of six rotating plates and two "standard" dishes (a lamb sloppy joe and a flatbread du jour). The quality of the food is pretty good, especially if you think of the dishes as bar snacks on steroids.

The shrimp spring roll was probably the best thing I tried - nice flavor with a crispy, fried exterior, and served with a spicy soy sauce for dipping. The shrimp did not get lost in this spring roll, which is so often a complaint of mine.

For the health-conscious or vegetarian in the crowd, potato and quinoa croquettes were really nice, with a rich herb-garlic sauce. I'd never seen quinoa cut into a croquette before, and had my doubts, but it was definitely successful.

There was also a pair of lamb chops, served medium rare with a potato-corn hash and a sauce of red wine and blackberries. This was just average, cooked well and seasoned fine, but somehow the dish got lost compared to the other, brighter, items on the menu. The most interesting thing on the plate was actually a savory corn flan, slightly sweet and tender.

Not all of the dishes were so successful, however. A summer risotto with shrimp and chorizo was overwhelmingly flavored of the cured and smoked sausage. I love chorizo, but this was a large and heavy portion that lacked balance (and shrimp). It wasn't bad, just, well, either too large a portion or too rich for the size.

The "tenured lamby joe," so called because it is popular and stays on the menu, was average. It had a very slight lamb flavor and a mild sweetness - definitely nice to eat, and served on a sourdough roll, but also not so different than any other sloppy joe of your childhood. Unfortunately, the flatbread of the day was awful, the only thing which I'd call a true failure. The bread was burned and inedible in places, and everything on top was dry and unappealing (mushrooms, unmelted shredded cheese and a thick tomato paste).

As for the wine selections, they were average. The by-the-glass list featured several bottles that are widely available around here (Guggenheim, Valle Escondido) for about $9 to $12, which made paying $5/glass a little less appealing. But at the same time, prices were certainly reasonable and I'm not sure "I've had that before" is a valid complaint.

If there's one significant downside to Six Plates, it's the location — in a strange retail/commercial complex on Erwin Road, not very near anything else you'd want to visit before or after.

If there's one great upside to Six Plates, it's that the kitchen stays open late — at least until midnight, and much later on the weekends. It's tough to find good food after 11 p.m. around here, and so this is a significant advantage.

All in all, I liked Six Plates. More than anything specific, however, I really enjoyed the concept — first and foremost it's a bar, the kind of place you'd go with a group of friends. And it's a bar that happens to serve some nice food. Everything is priced reasonably (a glass of wine tops out around $8), and if you order carefully you can find some fresh ideas and good flavors.

One suggestion to management: Redesign your web site. Blogging software is fine if you're a blog, but for an up-and-coming bar or restaurant you need something easier to navigate and a little sleeker.

http://sixplates.blogspot.com/

Six Plates
2812 Erwin Rd.
Durham, N.C. 27705
(919) 321-0203

History repeats. Even food history.

2008-07-01T12:16:00.000-07:00

Looking through a batch of cancelled Australian stamps, I found this one - brightly titled "PRODUCE FOOD!"

Granted, the all-caps and the exclamation mark make it seem more like the work of a 12-year-old girl than of a nation's postal service. But it's kind of interesting, punctuation aside. The stamp was issued in 1953 as part of a series emphasizing the link between Australia's agriculture and its economy.

It seems like issues never really go away. They may change a little, but they don't really get resolved. More than half a century later and we're still doing exactly the same thing here in the United States, trying to get people to understand the importance of farming and its impacts on other parts of life (nutrition and economics come to mind, and politics impacts on farming, and so on).

The other day, sifting through a bunch of old library catalog cards, I found one for a book titled "Conserving Energy in Your Home and Car," which is a topic I write about often for work. The book was written in 1973 though.

Same issues.

Review of Jujube

2008-06-25T05:40:00.000-07:00

Last summer, soon after moving to Carrboro, the farmers' market hosted an interesting event: five local restaurants showed up to make dishes using local ingredients, letting the crowds sample and take home the recipe.

Among the participants, one excelled - The folks at Jujube made a melon gelee, which more or less translated into "homemade jello." It was great, with bright, clean flavors, and stood out among the other more pedestrian offerings. Immediately, I had high hopes for the restaurant.

Unfortunately, after eating at Jujube a couple of times, I have to say I'm slightly disappointed. The food is hit-or-miss, and while some flavors stand out much of the food tends to blend together.

They have a nice selection of dumplings and appetizers, most of which are reasonably priced. But they generally disappoint: the pan-fried pork and cabbage dumplings have no real zing to them; the pork and shrimp spring rolls have a nice fried pork flavor, but no balance and any shrimp flavor is overwhelmed.

The sweet potato fritters are a nice surprise, however. Crisp on the outside with a soft, sweet interior, they're served with a "black vinegar sauce" that is spiked with hoisin sauce.

A dish of pan-fried crab and shrimp cakes is served with a sweet potato curry. While the curry is excellent - bright, crisp flavors, and the kind of intensity I had been hoping for - it overwhelms the mellow crabmeat, and the shrimp get lost entirely. The special one night of marinated, rosemary-infused pork loin is a muddle of flavors: served with caponata (traditionally an Italian eggplant relish), it just seems out of place and lacking inspiration.

Another highlight is dessert, however. The roasted banana ice cream is excellent, with a nice mellow smoothness to it. True, I'm a big fan of banana in desserts, but this was really well done. The chocolate-coconut tart, however, was just average. The coconut overwhelms, and seems more like a home recipe.

Perhaps my expectations got the better of me, but after two visits to Jujube I remain a little under-whelmed. The restaurant seems to do its simple dishes best: when they focus on bright ingredients, or one flavor, some foods can sing. But many combinations just blend together, and left me wanting more.

The restaurant has a good beer selection, but their specialty cocktails are a little too sweet for my tastes. I'd take the bar at Lantern over Jujube any day, if an interesting drink is what you're looking for.

I really wanted to like Jujube, but somehow it fell short for me. If you go, I think they key is to order carefully.

Jujube
1201-L Raleigh Rd.
Glen Lennox Shopping Center
Hwy 54 at 15-501
Chapel Hill, NC 27514

New Chef at Glass Half Full

2008-06-08T11:05:00.000-07:00

Here's some exciting and inspiring news for Carrboro's food and wine scene: Glass Half Full has a new chef, Ricky Moore, formerly of IndeBleu and Agraria in Washington, D.C. You may also know him from Iron Chef America; he competed in the "Thanksgiving" episode (losing to the new IC, Michael Symon).

I've not been a big fan of GHF's food, although I like many other aspects of the restaurant. So personally, I'm really hoping an inspired hand in the kitchen can turn things around. I stopped in last night to check out the scene, and initial signs are good: a big chunk of the menu was unavailable.

What that means, is that the kitchen is running through the ingredients they have on hand so that the menu can be reworked. Staff said a new menu should be out in a week or so, at which point Chef Moore will have formally put his stamp on the food.

I had the lamb for dinner, which was served with a pea "hash." It was a pretty simple dish, but I will say that the lamb was well cooked and well seasoned (two previous issues). It's far too early to make any judgements, so just mark me down as "hopeful." The staff also seems to anticipate good things -- a few people quietly acknowledged that the former menu was not the greatest, and everyone seems to be excited about the new cooking.

Glass Half Full
106 S. Greensboro St.
Carrboro, N.C. 27510
(919) 794-4107

Review of Il Palio

2008-06-03T04:58:00.000-07:00

I want to stress from the beginning that this is a positive review. We had dinner last night at Il Palio, the Italian restaurant in The Siena Hotel, and it was a good meal with solid service in a very nice dining room.

I stress that the review is positive because I also want to be critical. From everything I've read about the restaurant, and having eaten there, I know they aspire to a very high standard. Much of my meal succeeded, but there were parts that did not. Overall it was an excellent dinner, and I would certainly dine there again.

The meal started with a shotglass of parmesan and asparagus soup, a very rich amuse bouche from the chef. I'm always a fan of these little touches, and the soup was excellent. A shotglass was about all you would want anyway, because the parmesan adds a rich, unmistakable flavor.

As a first course, we had grilled quail and a pasta with lobster, asparagus, morels and sage. Both of these dishes were very good - the quail was perfectly seasoned, on polenta with sopresseta; the housemade pasta was a ravioli stuffed with burrata, with the richness of the lobster really shining. If I had one issue with our first course, it would be the marsala sauce that came with the quail. It was a little too sweet, and I found myself avoiding it. Otherwise, these were two really nice dishes.

We then had a pork chop served with a fried risotto cake and housemade bacon, and a stuffed ostrich filet with grilled fennel. Both of these were good, but if one thing stood out it was the risotto.

I'm a big fan of arincini, a traditional Italian antipasti where you take risotto, form it into a ball with a little piece of mozarella in the middle, and fry it. (You can find my pumpkin arincini recipe here, actually.) Il Palio's version is more of a cake than the traditional golfball-sized appetizer. And the restaurant fried it perfectly, crispy on the outside and soft in the middle. It was probably the highlight of the plate.

The ostrich was good, cooked medium rare and the slightest bit spicy. But the pork chop, which had an excellent crust on the outside, was a little overdone. I like my pork cooked medium-rare, but the waiter said the chef recommended medium. Perhaps this was a cue to order something else, but I tend to let chefs cook how they want. The porkchop was good, yes, but in the end also a little dry.

Desserts were solid, albeit a little small. I'm not one for huge portions, so for me to call a dessert "small" probably says something. The tiramisu was delicious, although the candied almond slivers got in the way. One of the things I love about tiramisu is the soft creaminess, and so adding something crunchy in there just seems strange. In theory this probably works, but for me the dessert is just pure comfort food, no need for textural balance.

The lemon cheesecake, made with a very mild goat cheese, was excellent - mild and rich, a hint of lemon, not too sweet. Absolutely no complaints here.

Random issues: Our waiter said the restaurant makes all of its own bread, and two of the three types we tried were good. The foccacia was soft and salty; the ciabatta had a nice crust and big airy holes inside. But a whole-wheat bread was burned on the bottom and seemed stale, as if it were old. It should never have been served.

We started out with a couple of drinks from the bar, both of which I thought were a little too sweet. And the wine list, heavy on the Italian wines (obviously), doesn't seem to offer too much value. Many that I looked at were priced 300% to 400% of retail, and while that's standard, or slightly above in some instances, it also doesn't represent a lot of value on more interesting bottles.

Random compliments: I liked the service. It was efficient and quick, but also casual - a mix that's really hard to find, and I appreciated it. I like nice restaurants, but I also want to feel comfortable. The dining room was nice - large, with the tables spaced out nicely. There weren't that many people dining while we were there, so it was fairly quiet anyway, but I don't imagine it gets too loud.

We saw the chef mingling out in the dining area a bit, which is something I always enjoy seeing. It lets people know, first, that he's actually in the kitchen that night. And second, it really conveys the idea that the chef wants to know what you think of the food, wants to know that his restaurant is operating as it should. I always find this a positive sign.

Overall, the meal at Il Palio was a success. There were highlights, and a few misfires, but it was a good dinner. The question, I suppose, is whether or not it's good enough for the prices they charge. All total the check came to about $190, after tax but before tip. Most of that was food; our wine and cocktails were $81.

Appetizers/first courses generally run $10 to $15; your "main course" comes in around $20 to $30. Desserts were $7.50; drinks were about $8.

Honestly, I think Il Palio is a little overpriced. Not much, mind you, but a little. It's not that I mind paying those kinds of prices - just that I expect the meal to be a little more streamlined, a few less miscues. The next time I'm there, I'll probably try eating more of the restaurant's smaller plates, and shy away from the main courses. The appetizers and first courses just seemed more interesting, and at about half the price.

All that said, it was a very good dinner and I will be back.

Il Palio (at the Siena Hotel)
1505 East Franklin Street
Chapel Hill, NC 27514
(919) 929-4000

Review of Weathervane

2008-05-28T04:43:00.000-07:00

I had lunch at Weathervane not too long ago, the restaurant attached to "gourmet" food store Southern Season. Despite my reservations about the enormous food emporium, the meal was really quite good.

As so often seems to be the case, the small plates/appetizers were the most interesting items on the menu. We ordered four appetizers for lunch and all of them were pretty good.

My one complaint would be: Sauce. Too much sauce.

Every dish had too much of some kind of sauce or accompaniment. Whether it was too much creme fraiche, an overwhelming corn relish or a sea of cream, each one did more harm than good to an otherwise very nice dish. But in the end they were still good dishes.

Cardamom-Carrot Griddle Cakes -- The waiter said this was his favorite, and despite my doubts he was exactly right. Think carrot pancakes, with a unique, nutmeg-ish flavor. Slightly sweet, light, and orange. I really enjoyed these, and will probably try to replicate the dish at some point. They came with about a half cup of tarragon creme fraiche, which was a little much.

Onion Tart -- I love onions. I love onion tarts. So for the griddle cakes to be my favorite dish really says something. And this was a pretty good onion tart; it was rich, smooth, even creamy with that sweet and subtle onion flavor. A nice crust, well seasoned and served with crispy pancetta. Sadly, it was sitting in a sea of bland tomato cream sauce.

Maryland Blue Crab Ravioli -- I think the trick to cooking with crab is simply not to mess it up. Just don't do a whole lot, and you'll be fine. This was a relatively simple dish, with the slightly-sweet crab flavor shining through but not overwhelming (outside of a crab cake I believe you can in fact have too much of crab's very rich flavor, but that's just my opinion). It came with a basil-sweet corn broth.

Pistachio-Fried Oysters -- Least favorite dish, but then again I'm not a huge oyster fan. They were good, with that distinctive briny flavor, though I didn't really get much pistachio taste. Served with a coconut-lemongrass curry cream that didn't do much for me.

That's it. One lunch, four solid dishes (and a sea of sauce). I was definitely impressed by what I ate at Weathervane -- I also tried the blueberry pancakes, which were excellent.

Certainly I had my reservations, because I'm not a big fan of Southern Season (too big, unnecessarily expensive, and a little on the gift-basket side of classy). But Weathervane seemed solid, based on my initial impressions, and I'll certainly try to eat there again sometime.

Weathervane @ A Southern Season
University Mall
201 S. Estes Drive
Chapel Hill, NC 27514

Finding a Refuge -- Two Chapel Hill Bars

2008-05-12T08:23:00.000-07:00

One of the great things about getting to know an area is finding your own ways to escape. It requires time — the sort of thing you can't rush or fake — but it's important.

It's taken me about nine months of living in the Carrboro/Chapel Hill area, for instance, but I've finally found two bars where I feel comfortable - places that stand apart from everything else around, not-so-hidden gems in a bustling commercial corridor. They are vaguely surreal, as if they don't belong, both unique and stylish along a stretch of Franklin Street that is otherwise pretty standard.

No disrespect to Orange County establishments (many of which I like), but these feel vastly different from other offerings.

The first is Roberts, in the Franklin Hotel. This is a hotel bar in every way - piano in the corner, plush couches, tall stools and a view of the front desk. If this place errs in any way, perhaps it could be called a cliche of a hotel bar. But still, I like it (I have an odd affinity for hotel bars, both in theory and practice).

There is a decent selection of bourbons, good bartenders and live music Thursday thru Sunday. They have a relatively uninspired beer selection, which is odd for the area, but frankly this doesn't bother me. And they close too early (midnight on the weekends, according to their web site), but somehow I suspect that's by design.

The bar has a subdued, calm atmosphere: quiet enough to talk, a muted television behind the bar, comfortable chairs and a view of the street. Beers run $5 or $6, bourbon starts at around $7 and goes north from there. Not an every-night place, but a great once-in-a-while escape.

Roberts at the Franklin
311 West Franklin Street
Chapel Hill, N.C.

The second spot is the bar at Lantern.

When I first visited Lantern for dinner, I noticed the sign indicating their bar was open until 2 a.m., while the kitchen stopped serving at 10 p.m. And yet as much as I looked around the dining room, I didn't see a bar.

It took another trip, and a more pointed exploration, to find Lantern's bar tucked down a hallway beyond the bathrooms. It's a dark room with red lights, dominated by a stylish bar and ringed by small tables. It's tight but not suffocating, and immediately feels far more urban than you expect.

I'm not typically the kind of guy to order specialty drinks. A vodka tonic is about as complicated as it gets for me - mostly I drink beer, bourbon or wine. But the mixed cocktail seems to be what Lantern is all about, and so I'm happy to oblige.

Frankly, anywhere else and I'd be embarrassed to order a "Windy Village" or "Hibiscus Petal." But Lantern's drinks are really, really good - infused liquors, interesting flavors, nothing too sweet. They're all light and crisp, even understated (forgiving the names), if that makes sense given the alcohol involved.

Lantern is probably the best bar on Franklin Street, depending on what you're looking for. Especially if you're looking for something on Franklin Street that doesn't feel anything like Franklin Street.

My previous review of Lantern can be found here.

Lantern
423 West Franklin Street
Chapel Hill, N.C.
919-969-8846

Soup — the Culinary Superfood

2008-05-04T12:09:00.000-07:00

While quinoa, soy, flax seed and wolfberries have all been called “superfoods,” (along with plenty more, of course), for my money the true culinary heavyweight is something else: Soup.

I love making soups for several reasons – they're simple, healthy, hearty, filling, tasty, rustic and pretty damn cheap. You can make soup out of just about anything, it stores easily and you can reuse it plenty of ways. I’ve turned leftover soups into sauces, braised meats with them, and mixed them into rice dishes for a little extra flavor.

In fact the only downside is that making a good soup actually takes some time and patience. If you need to put dinner on the table in under an hour, making a soup from scratch may not be the way to go.

What follows is an illustrated guide to making a soup. It is not a recipe, merely one method of making one soup. You can improve on it in a thousand ways, I’m sure, and I’d love to hear other versions, suggestions and tips.

So here we go…

First off, making soup is cheap. It’s almost free, really, depending on what you put in it and what you already have on hand. Consider this: my girlfriend likes to cook with boneless, skinless chicken breast. I consider this a flavorless, dry item, but she’s a nutrition student and I suspect that drives some of her choices.

Your basic, boneless, skinless chicken breast costs about $5 a pound around here (and of course you can get air-dried, free-range, life-is-heaven chicken breast for $10 a pound, if you want). That’s an absurd amount of money, especially when you consider a whole chicken costs about $1.30/pound. Most other cuts fall in that range – leg quarters, thighs, drumsticks, whatever, they’re all somewhere around $2 to $3 per pound, I believe.

So if you’re going to buy any chicken at all, make it whole chicken. My girlfriend gets the breast meat and I get, well, free chicken. That’s how I like to think of it, anyway.

I like to use a potato to thicken the soup and give it some body. A potato runs about 80 cents. A couple of heads of garlic will run you a little over a buck. Now we’re talking flavouring – whatever you want, pretty much. I found a bag of random peppers at the supermarket. They were ugly and on the verge of going bad, but it’s a soup so we don’t need to worry about that. I also used a leftover onion I had in the fridge.

That’s pretty much it, aside from some seasonings at the end.To start with, break down your chicken. It may take some practice, but eventually you can become pretty efficient and quick

You’ll be left with this…

And this …

I take the carcass, neck and those little wing tips and toss it into a pot of water. If we were making a more classical stock we’d also throw in everything else we could find (traditionally carrots, celery and onion). But frankly when I’m making soup I just use the chicken, unless I have scraps I want to get rid of anyway.

The chicken will simmer in this pot for about three or four hours, essentially until it breaks down. I just get it to about a boil and then reduce the heat to medium. If you’re making a stock, traditionally you don’t want a real boil going because everything breaks down and it’s harder to clarify. I don’t really care, because I’m making soup.

You should skim, however, as it simmers. Fat and impurities will rise to the top, and you can just skim them off with a spoon. If you put a lot of skin and fat into the pot you’ll be doing a lot of this. But if you spend just a couple of minutes cleaning some of the fat off the bones you’ll have a much easier time. As the chicken simmers and the water level drops, add some water back in so that the chicken is just about covered.

Now I roast the peppers.

I give them a very light coating in oil, crank the oven to about 400 degrees and let them go for about 40 minutes. I’ll give them a turn about midway through so they cook more or less evenly, but you’re making them ugly on purpose so it doesn’t really matter.

I also cut the top off of a head of garlic, drizzle on a little oil, wrap it in foil and toss that in the oven. That will roast for about 90 minutes or so.

Once the peppers are out, let them cool in a bag or in a bowl, with the top covered in plastic wrap. The idea is that the trapped steam will help the peppers separate from the skins and make them easier to clean. Some people say this works, some say it doesn't. I figure I have to let the peppers cool anyway, so I might as well try it.

When they’re cool, just peel off the charred skin and discard, along with the seeds. The roasting process adds a nice flavor, accents the sugars in the peppers and mellows some of the heat.

After three or four hours the chicken will have pretty much done its thing. I just drop a colander on top of a bowl and pour my broth into it, trapping all the chicken parts. Do not discard them.

You should have about six cups of broth. If it has a lot of fat in it, you can spoon most of it off or even chill the broth until it congeals on top. Once the layer of fat is solid it’s easy to remove in chunks, either with a fork or you can strain it. I usually just spoon it off as best I can so I don’t have to wait.

The broth goes back into the pot, along with our roasted garlic, some raw garlic, the onion, peppers and a grated potato (skin and all).

I then take a few minutes to pick meat off the chicken carcass.

No matter how many chickens you take apart, there’s always going to be some meat left on the bones – don’t waste it. I pulled this small pile of meat off the bones, and I actually thought I’d done a pretty good job with the chicken this time. Whoops.

I dump the chicken meat into the pot with everything else, but you could save that step until the end if you wanted the chunks in the soup.

Now, to pureeing/blending. I do this in batches, moving a few cups at a time into the blender and then into a bowl. If you have an immersion blender, well, I’m jealous.

Once you’ve blended the soup, return it to the pot. Time to taste and season. I typically add cumin, maybe a touch of cinnamon, anise and honey. A couple tablespoons of honey can go a long way towards brightening up a soup. And while I usually season a little as I go, save most of your seasoning for the end – as the soup reduces the seasonings become more concentrated. It’s pretty easy to season a soup well, let it simmer a while and then find out it’s too salty.

That’s about it. I’d say I got about a half gallon of roasted pepper and garlic soup out of this process. And depending on how you want to price the items, I’d say the soup cost about $3 to $5 to make.

Carrots in the Dominican Republic

2008-03-21T05:32:00.000-07:00

When I think about Dominican Republic trip, I think of crystal-clear waters and white beaches. But now I can't help but also think about carrots.

I spent a week there recently, renting a house with some friends on an isolated beach on the Samana Penninsula. We ate a lot of rice, a lot of grilled fish and a lot of eggs.

One night we ate dinner out in a nearby town, at a restaurant run by an Italian family (homemade pasta with shellfish, not bad). But most of the food we either cooked ourselves or ate in seaside shacks where the fish was freshly caught and simply prepared.

On our last night we were cooking at home, trying to use up everything left in the fridge. I'd bought a couple of chickens earlier in the week and had braised one for some kind of pulled chicken dish or stew.

(As a side note - when you travel, you see plenty of new dishes and styles and brands and pre-packaged products and even new vegetables. So it was very comforting to buy these two chickens and break them down. A chicken is still a chicken, everywhere.)

Anyway. So we had these carrots, these gnarly, huge carrots we'd bought but not eaten because vegetables need to be cooked really thoroughly there. I hacked up the biggest carrot and tossed it into the pot along with the chicken, beans, tomatoes and so on.

Now, I've never been a huge fan of carrots - maybe it's the fibrous texture, the chewiness, the earthy flavor. My mother, at the height of my food pickiness, once bet me $5 I couldn't eat an entire carrot. She won, when I couldn't make it through the first bite.

Of course I cook with carrots; I'm just not a huge fan. But eating this stew we made on our last night, I bit into a carrot and was amazed. It was so sweet, so clean, unlike any carrot I'd ever eaten before. I was really floored because I felt like I was tasting a carrot for the first time.

I suppose it's an obvious revelation, one of those things that you know academically but maybe don't quite emotionally realize until you experience it — food tastes different in different places. More or less chemicals, better or worse soil, farther or nearer farms; there are plenty of factors.

Whatever it was, that carrot was amazing.

Perfectly Unbalanced

2008-02-27T11:22:00.000-08:00

Much of good cooking — of good food — is about balance and harmony. Most of the time, anyway.

That's an obvious-sounding statement that in reality takes time to learn. Because when you start learning to cook, how to manipulate flavors and use different products and how to create, it all begins rather simply. As with everything, you learn a piece at a time.

Your first recipes are basic, not too many moving parts, not too many different flavors, and it develops from there. It's one thing to make a rich chicken stew, for instance. It's another step, a real epiphany, to realize that the rich flavor needs something to lighten it up, to balance it all out. To make it better.

But because we strive for balance and harmony, this is why giving in to decadence can be all the more satisfying sometimes.

That was all a long introduction to this: I ate dinner at Acme the other night, a wine-pairing dinner they hosted with Ridge Winery. And it was unbalanced and heavy and rich and perfect. It was a celebration of weight, an abolishment of light, the regalement of staying power. Effervescent flavors were not on the menu.

Ridge is a fairly significant winemaker in California. They do a lot of bigger wines, mostly Zins, high-alcohol monsters that pair well with meats and (frankly) not much else. When I think Ridge, I think Steak.

There's been plenty of backlash against wines like these — the big, jammy, alcoholic wines that many people think symbolize California have been demonized by some food and wine writers. And they're not entirely wrong: while these wines have a place (and I'm certainly not just talking about Ridge here), they are heavy and ripe and you can't drink too much because with alcohol contents around 15% it's starting to resemble a bottle of port.

I like these wines, just not all the time.

But when I heard Acme was hosting a dinner with Ridge, in conjunction with Chapel Hill Wine Co., I immediately called for reservations. I've mentioned before that I have doubts about Acme and its food, so I was hoping for the best. And I was not disappointed.

I'll include the menu below, but here's the short version: After a smoked-trout salad we had three meat courses that included veal chops, pork belly, duck confit, venison and boar. And then dessert, a butterscotch pudding. What's not to love?

Acme, I must say, did a great job. In a way, it made me even more irritated for all the other times I'd been. They had disappointed me in the past with under-seasoned, bland dishes and spotty service, but everything this evening was solid. Even the service was prompt and efficient, a noticeable improvement over past visits.

Acme put on a great meal, which only confirmed my suspicion that Yes, they can cook when they want to.

I would like to see Acme cook like that more often. Not necessarily the over-the-top richness, or the all-meat, all-the-time zeal. But certainly with the flair I saw in that meal, with the solid dishes, spot on seasoning and overall freshness. I would gladly eat there more often if the Acme of that dinner would be cooking all the time.

And frankly, at $80 (not including tax and tip), I found this to be a pretty good value. We tasted six wines with solid pours, and all six retail over $25 per bottle. They were good wines, the kind I would like to drink more often if they weren't a little pricey. No complaints on the price of the meal.

I think the Geyserville Zin (2005) was my favorite overall, but at about $37 a bottle it's tough to justify. The Chardonnay was amazing, more like drinking a red wine than a white - textured and rich, but at $45 I'll probably never have it again.

So here's to a little unbalance once in a while. ...

Ridge Santa Cruz Chardonnay

Mache Salad with Curried Cashews, Mint,

Goat Cheese, and Champagne Cured Mountain Trout

Ridge Paso Robles Zinfandel and Ridge Ponzo Zinfandel

Slow Cooked Eco Farm Pork Belly,

with Black-Eyed Pea Cochon and Sweet Mustard Reduction

Ridge Santa Cruz Cabernet and Merlot blend

Pan Seared Veal Chops with Porcini Mushrooms,

Thyme Spaetzle, and Green Peppercorn Gastrique

Ridge York Creek Zinfandel and Ridge Geyserville Zinfandel

Venison, Wild Boar, and Duck Confit Ragout,

with Handrolled Egg Noodles,

Parmiggiano Reggiano, and Small Farm Olive Oil

Butterscotch Pudding with Whipped Cream and Toffee

Acme Food and Beverage Co.

110 E. Main St.

Carrboro, N.C.

919-929-2263

Chapel Hill Wine Co.

1229 Airport Rd.

Chapel Hill, N.C.

(919) 968-1884

Salt

2008-02-17T18:44:00.000-08:00

If there is one thing that will improve your cooking, it's learning to properly season your food.

Back in culinary school, we had everything in volume. Dozens of eggs, gallons of oils, pounds of butter, cartons and cartons of cream ... everything you would have in your own kitchen, we had five or ten times over.

Except salt. For some inexplicable reason, the one ingredient that can make or ruin a dish was hard to find. We had one carton of kosher salt, exactly the same amount that I have in my kitchen now. And we had 25 people all trying to use it.

Salt, for all the warnings you hear and all the "healthy" low-sodium products out there, is absolutely essential. It's the one thing you should learn to control as well as possible, the one thing that will ruin a dish by adding too much, that one thing that leaves a food flat by leaving it out.

Learning to use salt means learning to understand flavor. And while it's infinitely simple, it isn't necessarily easy. Different people like different amounts, and some foods require little while others need a lot.

What salt does is make foods taste more like themselves - more intense, vibrant and textured. It's like taking a magnifying glass to your tastebuds. Without salt, flavors are muted.

One of my biggest pet peeves in a restaurant is poorly seasoned food. Sure, plenty have a salt shaker right there on the table but if I wanted to season my own food I would have stayed at home. And generally I thinkit's a sign of a a kitchen unsure of its own dishes, or just technically off, when a plate comes out that is not seasoned properly.

A few tips for using salt:

Taste as you go. I think this is one of the biggest keys to cooking well - you must taste your ingredients, taste the dish while you're cooking it, and taste the final product. If the first time you're tasting your dinner is when you sit down to eat it with the family, then it's a crapshoot. Maybe it tastes right and maybe it doesn't. By the time the food hits the plate you should know.

Use kosher salt. The reason is simple really - bigger granules. The larger salt crystals allow you to better control how much salt you're using. Some people say there is a different flavor in kosher v. table or iodized salt; maybe, but the real reason is the coarse feel. You can evenly season an area with kosher salt, letting it come off your fingers a little at a time. With the much finer table salt, you're more likely to end up with some spots heavily salted and other spots with none.

Know what you are cooking. Some foods take a lot of salt, while others take very little. It's easy to oversalt eggs, for instance. Potatoes, on the other hand, require a ton. Starchy, creamy foods in general are going to taste bland unless they get a fair bit of seasoning.

Season as you go. If you spend an hour in the kitchen without touching the salt and then try and season the final product, it's not going to come out quite right. Season as you cook, adding a little to each step.

Start small. You can't take the salt out, so add a little and taste. Not enough? Add some more. By adding salt gradually and then tasting, you can witness the flavors start to meld and really understand what the salt is doing, how it's bringing a dish together.

Where to Buy Wine in Carrboro, Chapel Hill and Durham

2008-01-30T02:14:00.000-08:00

When I first moved to this area, initially without a car, I spent four months buying my wine at Harris Teeter. There is something depressing about this -- not necessarily because of price or selection, but just because it's so contrary to what I really want from the experience.

I like to buy my wine from small shops, the kind run by knowledgeable people that like to talk about grapes and producers, barrels and climates, food pairings and soil. It doesn't matter that some (much? most?) of this may go over my head. Part of what I want is being around people who really care about the product, who really know what they're talking about, who get excited about the wine and want you to be excited as well.

Since those first months, and now having a car, I've found wine shops that do this. And wine buying has become fun again. Don't get me wrong, drinking the wine was always a good time; but now I'm back to being an active participant rather than just grabbing a bottle off the shelf ("Ah, a pretty bottle AND it's on sale with my Harris Teeter vic card!").

So here are the places where I now go to find a good bottle of wine. Some are better than others, but none require a discount card on your keychain to get the sale price...

Wine Authorities

I think this may be my favorite shop. There are closer places, but this one is the most fun. They have tastings on Saturdays, an enomatic (a machine that pours tastes of wine), a knowledgeable staff, and they specialize in estate grown bottles (avoiding mass produced wines). It's a relatively small store, maybe even a little too small, but they seem to really care about the wines they sell. They also have a nifty web site where you can track the bottles you've purchased, rate them, see what's in stock and get suggestions. I don't usually like stores tracking what I buy, but it works here.

I'm not a huge fan of Wine Authorities pricing "scheme," for lack of a better word. It's just a little too cute for me. They break their price ranges down to "Daily," "Weekly," and "Monthly" wines — you know, the frequency you would spend that much on a bottle. But on the flip side, it makes a lot of sense. They're trying to showcase wine as a daily thing, not an occasional luxury, and I can appreciate that. But the labels just seem to assume something about the income and wine budget of their customers , which seems odd. Then again they don't have any wines over $50 — refreshing, I suppose, but also a little odd and arbitrary.

I'm a big fan of Wine Authorities, and find myself driving the 15 to 20 minutes every other weekend to shop there. And it doesn't hurt that they have a solid case discount: 10% off any mixed purchase of 6-11 bottles, 15% off any mixed case or more, and 20% off a solid/uniform case. Getting 20% off a case of wine is a great discount if you find something you want 12 bottles of.

How they stay in business, however, open six days a week from 10 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., is beyond me. They definitely need longer hours.

Wine Authorities
2501 University Drive
Durham
(919) 489-2884

Chapel Hill Wine Co.

This is an easy second favorite on my list of wine stores. The selection is much greater than Wine Authorities, they also do Saturday tastings, staff is knowledgeable and they have good sale prices. This is much more of a "traditional" wine shop.

The store emphasizes domestic wines (divided by varietal) and French wines (obviously divided by region). Other wine producing countries get just that - a sign indicating the country where the wine was made.

That may seem obvious or normal, but it really works for me. When I think about wine, this is how I think about it (no doubt driven by marketing, but whatever). When I'm talking about domestic wines, I tend to think about Cabs and Zins and Merlots and so on. When I think France, I think Rhone and ... well, I think Rhone, mostly, but I've only recently started getting into French wines. But you get the point. Spain certainly has distinct regions, but that's probably asking too much from a store.

Chapel Hill Wine also seems to emphasize red wines over whites, which is fine by me but which could annoy someone else. The whites seem to be pushed off to the sides, with reds taking over the prime space in the middle of the store.

All in all, I really like Chapel Hill Wine. They offer the perfect range of wines - small enough that the staff knows what they sell, but large enough to have a good range of pricing and diversity. But coming to the store doesn't quite have the "event" feel of going to Wine Authorities, which is why I would make this my second pick. Also, no functioning web site. Who doesn't have a good web site these days?

Chapel Hill Wine Co.
1229 Airport Rd.
Chapel Hill
(919) 968-1884

Total Wine

The Wal Mart of wine stores, I can't shop here. It's too big. It's overwhelming. This is the opposite of the experience I want.

Total Wine is probably a good place to go if you know specifically what you want, or want to buy in volume. But I just can't get into a chain that calls itself "America's Wine Superstore." It probably works for some people, but not for me.

There are good things however: a great selection (too large for me to think about), a solid beer section, good pricing, and random wine and beer stuff for sale. And they are open Sundays, and until 9 p.m. or 10 p.m. most nights.

Total Wine
3615 Witherspoon Blvd.
Durham, NC
(919) 489-5082

Weaver Street Market

I really appreciate Weaver Street Market, and that they have a wine section, but this isn't where I buy my wine (or beer.) I can't shop here without the overwhelming sense of paying too much - except for cheese. This is most definitely where I shop for cheese.

Small selection, and there never seems to be anyone around to talk about the wine. They may have a knowledgeable wine staff, but I rarely see them. People do rave about their seasonal wine sales though, so perhaps those are a good time to check out the selection.

Weaver Street Market
101 East Weaver Street
Carrboro, NC
(919) 929-0010

Southern Season

People seem to love this store, but I can't get into it. It's crowded, expensive and ... that's it. Crowded and expensive.

They have a decent wine selection though, and plenty of staff on hand. I just don't like the feel of it all - there's an underlying sentiment that buying wine says something about you. The whole store seems artificial to me, but that's probably just me because I know a lot of people love it.

Southern Season
University Mall
201 S. Estes Drive
Chapel Hill, NC
(919) 929-7133

GlassHalFull
(Glass Half Full)

The stylish Carrboro wine bar also does retail sales, which is one of those great things that I just can't see being successful. First and foremost, it's a restaurant and bar. I've browsed through the retail side and I always feel uncomfortable, as if I ought to be eating or drinking rather than looking.

But I will say, I appreciate that it's offered. Especially, say, if you're in having dinner and really enjoy a wine - you can take a bottle home with you. And the restaurant does know its wines and has an interesting list (though I'm not a huge fan of their food).

Glasshalfull
106 S. Greensboro St.
Carrboro, N.C.
(919) 794-4107

After Breakfast, a Still Life

2008-01-25T06:03:00.001-08:00

Just a photograph, really. A sort of post-culinary still life. Breakfast today was eggs with garlic and sweet pepper, with an Australian cheddar cheese shredded in.

One of my biggest problems with photography and the web is that I can't control what this image will look like on your screen. Hopefully it looks allright...

Steps to a Rich Chicken Stew

2008-01-24T06:49:00.000-08:00

Chicken can be a boring food. Depending on what part of the chicken you use, and how you cook it, the bird is right up there with lettuce — average, boring, dull.

Boneless, skinless chicken breasts are the perfect example of this, and it shocks me that people pay such a premium for these at the grocery store. It astounds me that instead of purchasing a whole chicken for, say, six dollars, people will happily pay four or five dollars for a package of chicken breasts.

Chicken breasts dry out easily, have little flavor, and most recipes call for intense seasonings or sauces to give it some taste. But it does not have to be that way. The reason people say so many foods “taste like chicken” is because they spend most of their time cooking chicken trying to make it taste like something else. It’s relatively easy to impart flavor to a chicken dish — the meat will accept whatever herbs or sauces or spices you give it.

What is more difficult, but worth doing, is to make chicken taste more like chicken.

When chicken is done right, when the flavors are intense and rich, it’s a food that takes me back to my childhood, that comforts, that envelops my senses. When chicken is cooked poorly, at best it’s bland and boring and at worst it’s dry and almost inedible.

The secret, really, is to utilize the chicken, to not waste it, to love the chicken, and to try and make that chicken taste more like chicken than even the chicken itself ever thought possible.

I made chicken stew yesterday. It was an all-day process, but absolutely worth it. The final dish was rich and comforting, and served on brown rice it was the perfect food for a cold night. Anyone can make a chicken stew or soup – it’s some simple variation of: cook vegetables, cook chicken, add chicken broth, simmer and serve. But to make the dish so that it is intense and warming involves the same steps, but with more detail.

A few tips to making a great chicken stew:

First, buy the whole chicken. It’s the cheapest way to get the most out of it, and the fastest way to really learn how to cook it. If you traditionally only enjoy breast meat, or thighs, or buy chicken stock rather than making your own, think of it this way: when you buy the whole chicken you’re buying whatever cut you like most, and getting the rest for free.

Break down the bird, removing the thighs, drumsticks, breasts and wings. Throw the remaining bones in a pot of water, add aromatics, simmer for several hours. You now have a pot of stock that otherwise would cost several dollars, and this is with none of the annoying salt or chemicals added to most supermarket brands.

Remove the chicken carcass from the pot, and pick the remaining meat off. No matter how adept you get at fabricating a chicken, there will always be meat left on the chicken. Do not waste it.

Skim the impurities from your chicken stock as it simmers, then strain and chill. The chicken fat will congeal on top of the liquid – skim this off and keep it.

Season and brown the chicken pieces you will use in your stew using the chicken fat. Michel Richard in his book “Happy in the Kitchen” talks about using chicken fat to sear steaks, saying it gives them a meatier, richer flavor. It works well here also, and with each step of the process little details like this are intensifying the chicken flavor.

After your meat is browned, I place it in an aluminium foil package with some red wine and chicken stock and braise it for several hours at a low temperature, say 250 degrees or so. When it’s done, you should be able to pull the meat apart with a fork.

Cook your vegetables in chicken fat as well – same reason here: we want to use the chicken in every step of this dish. It makes a difference, as opposed to using olive oil, canola or even butter. What we’re trying to do is create a dish that has depth, layering chicken on top of chicken.

I like to use some black beans in my stews, and some diced tomatoes. I do use canned beans and tomatoes (when out of season), but drain the liquid from the cans first. Then add the shredded chicken and chicken stock to your pot, and allow to simmer. You can add more stock that you really need and allow it to reduce, which will only intensify the flavors.

The end result is a dish that is simple but which requires time and patience. I think this is the heart of rustic cooking, really. Nothing here is complicated, nothing difficult, nothing requiring classical technique or crazy methods. It just requires a little time and a desire to produce a stew that tastes, above all else, richly of chicken.

Review of Acme

2007-11-25T21:03:00.000-08:00

I get the sense when eating at Acme Food and Beverage Co., talking to people about the restaurant, reading other reviews and looking at its web site, that Acme may once have been something special. But now, and perhaps for some time, it seems to be coasting on reputation.

In the last couple of months I've eaten at Acme several times. Experiences have generally ranged from average to average, with little of the food significantly better or worse than that. The restaurant has an attractive dining room, an inviting bar, a good location and an intriguing menu. And yet the food seems to peak at "pretty good," while its web site proclaims "Chosen Top Ten Tastes In The South."

If you click on the "news" section of Acme's web site, the most recent entry is from February 2002.

I just get the sense that Acme was once a thriving restaurant that is now resting on its laurels, essentially enjoying its place as a "fine dining" establishment in an area that offers few upscale options. And restaurants that seem to have stopped pushing, seem to be cooking in place, are often disappointing because you can't help but leave wondering about what could have been, and what the place was once like.

Seasoning and balance, which I gripe about often when reviewing food, need some work at Acme. The house made ravioli of butternut squash and goat cheese is absolutely overwhelmed by the lemon juice that goes into the sauce. The fried oyster salad has a fair bit too much salt in it. Fried green tomatoes with fresh mozzarella are overwhelmed by a balsamic reduction that obscures other tastes on the plate.

On the other hand, there are high notes. A ragu of wild boar is rich and sweet. The braised short ribs are tender and flavorful. And in a dish of otherwise average grilled pork, braised collard greens stand out as perfectly balanced and seasoned.

Presentation can also be very good. Not that presentation makes up for taste (not at all), but it must be said that the plates — and the restaurant as a whole — have a certain aesthetic that is inviting and gives a diner hope. A dish of spaghetti squash, beets, goat cheese and arugula pesto is creatively molded and neatly shaped. The fried green tomatoes actually look quite good, and you find yourself hoping that perhaps on another day they might be better. The dining room has just the right amount of light with rich, muted colors.

Service can be hit or miss. A bottle of wine, for instance, arrives after the appetizers. The bar can be slow, and not necessarily on a crowded night. Waiters may disappear for a lengthy stretch of time, but return with an odd enthusiasm, as if hoping to distract you from their absence.

I left Acme after each meal with a similar feeling: wishing I had eaten there earlier. And not, say, a 6 p.m. reservation instead of 8:30 p.m. But perhaps 2002 instead of 2007, in a time when the restaurant was fresher.

The food at Acme is not bad, for the record. It is certainly better than some of its nearby competition, and some of the dishes are very good. But it is also not as good as it could be; it just seems tired, and slightly out of sync, and I'm hoping it can catch its breath before I dine there again.

Acme Food and Beverage Co.
110 E. Main St.
Carrboro, N.C. 27510
919-929-2263

Trumpets and Bread - Deceptively Simple

2007-11-19T04:46:00.000-08:00

I tend to think of playing the trumpet and baking bread as pretty similar — both appear relatively simple, and yet their amazing richness comes from subtle variations in technique that could take a lifetime to master.

Years ago, I decided to try and learn the trumpet. I scheduled a couple of lessons, and when asked by the instructor why I wanted to learn that particular instrument I said, "because it seems simple." I love the trumpet, but truth is that with only three keys/pistons it didn't look very hard to learn.

Well, the instructor laughed a little and explained that it was, in fact, just the opposite: that the trumpet is so difficult because it only has three keys. All the amazing variation, the depth of tone, the quick notes, that all comes from the trumpet player and what he does with his body. Three "buttons" to push is only the very beginning.

And that's a lot like bread, I think. Four ingredients make up the most basic of breads (flour, water, salt, yeast), but it's really all in the technique. And from those four basic ingredients, with some simple variations and knowledge and experience, you can make just about anything.

In the course of getting a diploma in culinary arts, I spent eleven weeks in an introductory baking class. We covered a lot of ground relatively quickly and superficially, concentrating more on technique than any one product. We made muffins and cakes and pies and tarts and ice creams and pastries and, yes, breads.

While our breads were not bad, they also weren't particularly good. We just didn't spend a lot of time perfecting any of them, and so mostly what we wound up with were basic loaves, sandwich bread maybe, simple and smooth and not at all difficult. What we didn't make, and what I've always obsessed over, is a really good rustic loaf of bread. You know the crusty kind, with big holes and a dark exterior, the kind you really have to chew on.

I kept trying to make that loaf, experimenting with different flours and rise times and baking temperatures. I used more water. I used less. I kneaded more, I kneaded less. But something wasn't working, and that really great rustic loaf remained just out of reach.

Finally, recently, I got around to using a recipe many people know. Last year the New York Times published a "no knead" bread recipe that, the author swore, made an amazing rustic loaf of bread with almost no work and with no chance of failure.

I ignored the recipe for a long time, assuming that somehow having been to culinary school put me beyond this method. And perhaps, a little, enjoying the idea that good bread, for all its apparent simplicity, was actually a very difficult thing.

Turns out, I was wrong. Really wrong. Baking this bread was a humbling experience.

I encourage you to try this bread recipe, which you can find here. It really is as simple as claimed, and the finished product really is as great. It makes an excellent loaf of bread, a basic, rustic boule, and it's far better than anything else I've made.

Now, true, it's just one type of load. This recipe doesn't end baking classes everywhere, or put professional bakers out on the street. Technique and subtlety are still vital for producing all kinds of breads. But it's fascinating, beautiful, to know that this simple method can produce something so perfect.

New York Times

Nov. 8, 2006

Recipe

Article

Sharpening Your Knives

2007-11-11T09:38:00.000-08:00

I have a culinary confession to make: I cannot shave with my chef’s knife. My paring knife won’t take the hair off my arm. And my santoku is not a cure for five o’clock shadow. I make this “confession” because to a certain set, sharpening and honing a kitchen knife is like a religion. And a knife that is not razor-sharp is the mark of a heretic.

Two questions come up all the time: Where can I take my knives to be professionally sharpened? And, what knife sharpening system should I buy?

My own knives are sharp, but not razor sharp. I do not have them professionally sharpened. I take care of them myself, simply and cheaply. And yet they slice tomatoes fine, dice potatoes accurately, butcher meat efficiently and fabricate chickens effortlessly.

Unless you have a specific need for razor sharp knives, seriously dislike doing it yourself or just have cash to burn, having your knives professionally sharpened is a waste of time and money. And an expensive sharpener – especially some of the Rube Goldberg-esque devices out there – is an unnecessary item.

First, a note - a sharp knife is important. It’s a popular adage that I believe is true: a dull knife is more dangerous that a sharp one. A sharp knife does what you want, cuts what you want; a dull knife will slip and wind up cutting you.

But that said, does a knife need to be razor sharp? Does it need to be sharpened daily? Is the true test of your knife skills whether or not you can remove the hair off your arm? The answer is “no,” for the vast majority of us. It may make sense for a commercial kitchen to send out its knives for professional sharpening, but for the home cook I see little need. It can be done at home, and without the need for overly expensive and complicated devices (like this one here)…

What you need are two items: a “steel” and a “stone.” That’s it. And while you can always find a way to pay fantastically high prices for basic items, it just isn’t necessary. A basic search online shows plenty of sharpening stones and honing steels available for under $20 each.

Simply put, the sharpening stone is what gives your knife its edge. It removes small amounts of steel to put that edge in place. You will not be using a stone very often. As you use your knife, that fine edge will actually bend to one side. The honing steel straightens that edge, making the blade efficient once more. The steel you will use much more frequently.

To hone your knife: After you have used a sharp blade for a while, you will feel that it is starting to lose some of its edge. This is natural and doesn’t mean you’ve done a thing wrong, only that repeated use and perhaps a hard cutting board has had an affect on the blade. It needs to be honed, to straighten the edge of the blade.

Take the steel in one hand and the knife in the other. It may seem counterintuitive at first, but you want to run your knife’s blade against the steel and towards yourself, as if you are shaving thin strips off the steel. The proper angle is something you will come to sense after a while; about 18 degrees is the technical answer but with practice you will learn to feel it. Start with the blade more parallel to the steel and gradually increase the angle.

When you begin to feel the blade really bite against the steel, you’ve gone to far. Narrow the angle a bit, and you should be there. Run the blade along both sides of the steel, a few times each side.

I find myself honing my knife every few days, but not every day. Professional cooks may hone their knives every few hours, but they’re cooking for dozens or hundreds of people; most of us cook in much smaller volumes.

To sharpen your knife: Sharpening your knife involves drawing the blade against a stone to actually create an edge. Most inexpensive stones have two sides, one more coarse than the other; a nicer sharpening stone may actually have three sides to it, giving a more gradual decrease in coarseness.

In reality, if you care for your knives and keep them in good shape I find that I only use the finest side of my sharpening stone. I don’t let my knives get so dull that I need the more coarse side. But if you buy a dull, inexpensive knife it may require more work to put the edge in place. The process is the same.

Begin by putting the stone on a solid foundation. I often use a damp kitchen towel. Stones need to be oiled, so the blade moves slowly and so that the edge you create is uniform. The general wisdom is not to use a cooking oil because the organic fats in it can break down and become rancid, stinking up your sharpening stone. While that’s good advice, I use olive oil and simply wipe it off when I’m done. My knives stay sharp and they don’t seem to smell, but use whatever you prefer.

I use a two-handed grip as seen in the pictures. Not because I need to apply a lot of pressure, but because keeping the knife level is key. You want all portions of the knife blade to pass across the stone with the same angle. Again, about 18 degrees is the technical answer – more than that and your blade can become blunted; less than that and you create a very thin and unstable edge. Ultimately, it’s about practice and getting a feel for the process.

To draw the knife across the stone, I rotate my torso as much as I move my hands. Your hands/arms will certainly move some, but by guiding the blade with your body as well you will help to keep the knife level.

Run the blade across the stone a few times on each side, test for sharpness, and repeat as needed. It will take some practice, but the payoff of a sharp knife is worth it.

Some tips:

Practice. If you’re nervous about sharpening good knives on your own, start with that clunker of a chefs knife that we all have tucked in the kitchen drawer. Most kitchens I’ve been in have plenty of cheap, bad knives lying around. Start with these, odds are you can’t make them much duller.

Take care of your knives. Don’t simply toss them into a drawer where they can bang around with other metal utensils and become dull or chipped. A magnetic knife strip can keep them safe, or a wooden knife block (though I find these take up too much counter space and tend to be unnecessarily expensive). If you’re going to keep your knives in a drawer, invest in some plastic blade guards. They cost about $3 and will go a long way towards keeping your blades in good condition.

Use the right cutting board. Doing any sort of cutting on a hard surface - glass or metal, like countertops or inset butcher blocks - is a fast way to dull your knives. Get a plastic board and you'll find that your knives stay sharper, longer.

Keep it simple. Yes, you can buy electric knife sharpeners or crazy contraptions that set the angle of the blade against the stone for you. You can track down “Free Knife Sharpening Day” at the local kitchen store and eagerly await it. You can pay someone to sharpen your knives for you. But honestly, why? It’s not difficult – it just takes a little practice and a little self confidence. And learning to do something yourself is so much more satisfying than paying someone else to do it.

Wine Class/Tasting at 3 Cups

2007-11-09T11:26:00.000-08:00

I was at the 3 Cups wine class on Nov. 8, which tasted six wines from family estates in Spain and France. I have some mixed opinions about the event, so I thought I'd share them here.

The event is a monthly happening at 3 Cups, where you pay $20 to taste a series of wines and hear someone discuss the wines and the winemaking process. It's a fairly intimate setting (there were 15 of us last night), and for a little more than an hour we listened to the wine distributor talk about the wines, where they came from, how they tasted and what foods they would pair well with.

The good things about the tasting class -- First off, you're tasting some really nice wines with some folks who are obviously very passionate about the wines and who are also very knowledgeable. No complaints there, the wines are good and the information is solid.

I want to stress that I appreciate what 3 Cups is doing here: trying to take a subject like wine, which has the potential to be intimidating and stuffy, and make it more a part of daily life. And I agreed 100% with some of the comments last night, about the price range of wine being focused on. A ton of wine sold in this country is cheap and mass produced. You're talking about $8 and $9 bottles where the key is consistency year to year, and where the production process is engineered to guarantee that. On the other side, a lot of wine sold is higher-end, which has its own built in market.

The wine focused on last night at 3 Cups fell into the $12 to $34 range, which I think is the range where people beginning to be interested in drinking wine really start to branch out, explore and see what is available.

The not so good things -- I really wouldn't call this a good value for the experience. You are, ultimately, paying $20 for a sales pitch. The idea is not only for 3 Cups to expose you to wine, but for you to buy it. And so the experience and the information, aside from having a nice structure and not having to fight to ask a question, is not all that different than any number of free tastings done at wine stores all the time. But at the 3 Cups tasting, ordering sheets are distributed, case discounts highlighted, and other 3 Cups products offered for sale. There's no pressure and it's not overbearing, but it is undoubtedly a sales pitch.

A good wine store will answer any of your questions, help you choose bottles, and pair those wines with food. For no cost. (As will, I am certain, 3 Cups). A good wine store will regularly bring in wine distributors or winemakers to showcase their wines for free. Everyone wins in these scenarios, because the deal usually involves the wine store carrying the product. So you the consumer get a free taste and access to someone with knowledge, and the distributor gets his product in front of you. No money need change hands.

Also, the discussion last night centered around old world wines and in my opinion had a definite sort of old-world-wine-snobbishness to it. The idea is that Americans most enjoy drinking wines that can be enjoyed without food, and that this is something which needs fixing. I have to disagree with that sentiment, at least in part because I'm a fan of high-alcohol, big, ripe California Zinfandels.

I will say, however, that the wines tasted at 3 Cups were very good wines. They were solid, interesting estate wines with an average price of a little over $23 a bottle. That's not bad at all, and your average free wine store tasting will generally showcase a mix of wines, many of them simpler and priced much lower. The tastes offered were also somewhat larger than you'd get in a store tasting, but not by a whole lot.

So, is the 3 Cups wine tasting for you? Maybe. It depends on what you want and expect. For all my misgivings, I'm not wholly critical. I tasted six interesting wines and heard some passionate people make interesting comments. I probably drank the equivalent of one glass of wine. If you can afford $20 to find out, then maybe it's worth a shot. But go in realizing that it's less of a "class" and more of a tasting and sales/buying opportunity.

Oh, and best wine of the night goes to La Rioja Alta, Ardanza Reserva, 1999, which had excellent structure and tight, bright fruit. ($32)

3 CUPS
431 West Franklin Street
Chapel Hill, N.C.
(919) 968-8993