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Newsletter for August 2006 Your source for what’s cooking at OBW
25 South Indian Alley Winchester VA, 22601 540-662-1455 |
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This month, I am very happy to announce that we are starting to source as much of our lamb as possible from Virginia Lamb in Clarke County. It is a phenomenal product that tastes superior to any other lamb that I have ever had. I’m also working with a local farm to supply us with veal and other meat products. I’m really happy that local farmers are starting to ramp their production to the point where they can supply the needs of the restaurant, allowing us to support them and to keep more of all of our dollars in the local economy.
And, this month, I am sad to say that the Commonwealth has taken a major step backwards in forcing all wineries to go through distributors. At lot of our Virginia wine list is in flux as a result. I really don’t know how all this is going to play out, but expect some shortages of Virginia wines until we can figure it out.
On a brighter note, I invite you to read about black pepper, limequats, and lobster mushrooms this month. And finally, here’s how I do the creamy zucchini and the corn that you have been raving about.
All my best,
Ed Matthews, Chef/Owner
Every Wednesday is Tapas Night Each Wednesday night, we serve tapas from 5:00pm to 9:00pm. Tapas are small, fun dishes, designed so that you can try a range of foods. Last week we featured 20 dishes, of which 8 were vegetarian. My favorite tapa was Huevos con Chorizo, eggs with chorizo, poblanos, onions, fresh tomatoes, and garlic. This week I plan to offer miniature Truffled Pheasant gratins.
Saturday, August 19, 10:00am – 12:00, Demonstration at the Freight Station Farmers Market Free! I’ll be at the farmers market in the parking lot on Valley Avenue across from Handley High School demonstrating dishes made with ingredients that I find at the market. I won’t know in advance what I’m making because I don’t know what will be there. This is your chance to ask, “What do I do with THAT?”
Tuesday, August 22 through Saturday, August 26, Closed for Annual Summer Holiday
Thursday, August 31, Caribbean Fusion, Riesling, and Rosé Dinner Here’s the perfect excuse for all our DC area weekenders to take extra advantage of the long Labor Day weekend. Take Friday off and miss the traffic by coming out Thursday evening for our end of summer celebration. $65 per person. Reception from 6:30pm to 7:00pm. First course promptly at 7:00pm.
Thursday, September 21, Annual Oktoberfest Dinner with Tröegs Brewery Join special guest Chris Trogner of Tröegs Brewery as we sample his beers during our fourth annual Oktoberfest dinner. $60 per person. Reception from 6:30pm to 7:00pm. First course promptly at 7:00pm.
Sunday, October 8, 1-3pm, Free Demonstration at Arborfest at Blandy Experimental Farm Each Columbus Day weekend, The State Arboretum of Virginia hosts ArborFest, the Arboretum’s fall festival and plant sale. Hours are 9 to 4:30 both Saturday and Sunday, rain or shine. It’s become a tradition that I give a cooking demonstration featuring many of the herbs grown at the farm on Sunday afternoon. I always have a great time at this event. Come join me!
Sunday, October 15, 4pm-until, Cooking Lessons and Dinner at SSMT Designer House in Boyce This is just coming together as I write this, so details are a little sparse. Shenandoah Summer Music Theatre is holding a designer show house in Boyce, in which many local designers have decorated the rooms. I will be offering cooking lessons and dinner for twelve people after the doors close on Sunday the 15th. How you become one of the lucky twelve is still up in the air. More details later.
Thursday, October 26, Burgundy Dinner We’re still firming up the details of this dinner featuring wine and food of the Bourgogne. I have some stunning wines in mind. Price is $75 per person. Reception from 6:30pm to 7:00pm. First course promptly at 7:00pm.
November, Daring Dinner—Are You Brave Enough? My sous chef Danny and I are designing a menu for chefs. These are dishes we would order if we had the time to go out, dishes such as Prosciutto-Wrapped Sweetbreads and Braised Veal Cheeks, things are perfectly delicious, but which most people don’t have the guts to try. Do you?
Thursday, December 21, Annual Greatest Hits Dinner For our annual Greatest Hits dinner, we will be combing through the thousands of dishes that we have done in 2006 and designing a five-course menu of our customers' favorite dishes, paired with wines.
One Block West Rewards is our way of saying “Thank You!” to our very best customers. Among the many benefits are gift certificates when you reach certain spending levels, a quarterly dinner for two drawing, advance notice of special events, and special members-only discounts at certain events. You also get moved to the top of waiting lists for events in the case that we are fully booked. And as we get to know you, we book you into your favorite tables and put your favorite dishes on the menu.
Quarterly Drawing Winner. The winner of the quarterly Dinner for Two drawing is Scott Lawson of Front Royal. Scott, your certificate will be arriving this week. Looking forward to seeing you soon.
Gift Certificates. We’ve already sent out over $2500 in free gift certificates to members this year.
Special Event. Thursday, August 17th. All members will receive 10% off dinner with presentation of their rewards books.
Not a member and want to be? Come in and register.
You may notice that we flavor the olive oil for our tables with rosemary and a mix of black, white, green, and red “peppercorns.” A customer asked me the differences between the various colors. Here’s what I know.
Native to South India, black pepper (Piper nigrum) is a flowering vine grown for its berries, which provide one of the world’s most used spices. The berries grow in long clusters and they, like most fruits, undergo color change as they ripen. Unripe berries are green and fully ripe berries are a deep red.
Green peppercorns are typically freeze dried (as in our peppercorn mix) or pickled, which we use in sauces for meat and game.
Black peppercorns come from green peppercorns that have been cooked briefly and then dried. As the cooked fruit dries, it shrivels and blackens.
White peppercorns come from soaking ripe red peppercorns for several days until the fruit can be rubbed off of the white seed.
Fully ripe red pepper berries are sometimes pickled, but the dried red or pink “peppercorns” in commercial pepper mixes are the fruits of various other plants, whose fruits have a spicy flavor similar to Piper nigrum.
Interesting Web Site. For your average American chef, I know quite a lot about spices and Asian cuisines, but there is a ton of stuff on Gernot Katzer's Spice Pages that is new to me. I look forward to browsing in my spare time.
In July, my produce specialty buyer offered me some limequats. I am always game to play with something new, so I bought a case, sight unseen. What arrived was a box of cute little limes the size of kumquats.
We, that is, everyone in the kitchen and the produce driver who is just as curious as we are, each proceeded to eat one out of hand, kumquat-style. Mistake! Nasty bitter little things. In trolling the net, when you see “Whole or sliced, this fruit can be eaten out of hand,” just remember one of my favorite food adages, “Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should!”
OK, next up, salsa. We love kumquat salsa for its bright citrus flavor, but we can report that we don’t like limequat salsa—no amount of sugar can cure the bitterness. And did I mention that the seeds are obnoxious too?
Surmising that the bitterness is in the rind, I decided to make limequat ade (limequat juice, simple syrup, and carbonated water) for our guests at the July Harvest Dinner who do not drink alcohol. That was a big hit, but juicing the tiny little SOBs was tedious and not worth the effort. I also candied some slices for garnish on the Frozen Peach-Limequat Soufflé, in which I used limequat juice to perk up the acid in the very ripe peaches, both successful limequat applications.
Since then, I’ve been using them strictly for garnish. Whole and sliced, they sure look cute on a plate. But I still have a bunch of the darn things to use up. Bottom line, save your money. There’s nothing you can do with a limequat that you can’t do more easily and less expensively with a standard lime. Now, kumquats are a different story. They are fun to experiment with.
Now, for what they are. Limequats are a cross of a lime and a kumquat. Why would you do that? To develop a fruit that can grow in colder climates. I am guessing that with a little winter protection, we might be able to grow limequats in Virginia. Other kumquat hybrids are calamondin, lemonquats, mandarinquats, and citrangequats.
We featured lobster mushrooms recently. They’re another specialty item that I’m trying to come to grips with. I’ve cooked them many times over the last ten years and have finally concluded that they are the mushroom world equivalent of jicama or water chestnuts. Not to offend any of you jicama or water chestnut devotees, but I use both of those primarily for texture, and that’s just what use I’ve concluded that lobster mushrooms have. They don’t have a lot of flavor (a very mild, slightly nutty flavor) and they remain solid and almost crunchy even when fully cooked.
The lobster mushroom (Hypomyces lactifluorum) is not really a true mushroom. Rather, it is a parasitic mold that has covered a mushroom (generally a Russula or a Lactarius). The name lobster comes from the red-orange color resembling a cooked lobster of the H. lactifluorum spores on the outside of the host mushroom.
Bottom line, lobsters don’t do a lot for me.
In July, we hosted a harvest dinner featuring a dinner made from produce from Gene and Beth Nowak, our key produce suppliers from Bunker Hill, WV. I didn’t tell anyone in advance that the meal was to be entirely vegetarian and I am sure that none of them missed the meat. I really love this menu because it speaks so clearly of now, of summer.
Tomato, Cucumber, and Fresh Mozzarella Salad with Pickled Torpedo Onions Veritas Sauvignon Blanc Virginia 2005 ab Four Cheese Tortellini in Tomato, Basil, and Corn Cream with Everona Dairy Piedmont Sheep’s Cheese Afton Mountain Gewürztraminer Virginia 2005 ab Creamy Zucchini Cake with Fresh Tomato and Herbed Goat Cheese on Creamy Yellow Squash and Roasted Garlic Sauce North Mountain Vineyard Chambourcin Virginia 2004 ab Frozen Peach-Limequat Soufflé with Apricot Coulis and Blackberry Coulis White Hall Soliterre Eiswein Virginia 2002
Recipe: Creamy Zucchini
Here’s a recipe that I promised many of you some months ago. This squash dish is a recurring theme in my cooking, a way of translating humble zucchini into something extraordinary and sinful. It has featured in many wine dinners this year, this past time in the guise of panko-crusted sautéed cakes. I think I stole some portion of this idea from Julia Child back in the mid-1970s. (Mom, do you remember?) This recipe is very labor and time intensive, but you ask for it constantly, so here it is.
5 lb small, seedless summer squash (I often use a mixture of zucchini, yellow squash, and cymlings) 2 T minced garlic 4 T basil chiffonade 1 quart heavy cream (up to one quart) 1 c grated pecorino cheese salt and pepper, to taste
Grate the squash. Handful by handful, squeeze all the water from the squash that you can. Yes, my hands hurt for days after making this dish. OK, the labor’s all done now. Here comes the time part. Place the squash, garlic, and basil in a sauce pan over medium heat with enough cream to let the squash cook without burning. Add as much heavy cream as you need to get the mixture to start cooking down. Once it cooks down, lower the heat and keep simmering, stirring a few times an hour, until the mixture is as thick as you want it. Stir in the cheese and season to taste. My last batch took six hours to get to the point where it was thick enough to make cakes from, at which time, after it cooled, I augmented it with eggs and panko to ensure that the cakes set up.
Finally, we’ve had some really great sweet corn from the farmers market recently and nine out of ten customers in the dining room have commented on how good it is, asking how I cook it. Well, the truth be told, I don’t cook it at all. We shave the corn off the cob with a knife and then just before we plate it, I warm for ten seconds in a hot pan with a little clarified butter, salt, and pepper. Try this at home. Most people overcook their corn.
All my best and come see us when you can,
Ed
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Copyright © 2006 Shenandoah Food and Beverage Holdings, LLC sensational seasonal cuisine and the W logo are trademarks of Shenandoah Food and Beverage Holdings, LLC. |
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