inside restaurants – Page 4

Zingerman’s Roadhouse: Proof That American Food Is Delicious

Up until recently, I’ve never considered myself a real fan of “American cuisine.” Granted, I love apple pie and hamburgers, but when it comes down to great cooking, I tend to look to other countries for inspiration.

And I’m not alone. Even in the finest kitchens in the United States, American fare isn’t exactly heralded as high cuisine. This country may have some amazing, world-reknown chefs, but more likely than not, these stand-out culinary stars are cooking a hybrid of gastronomic styles. Take for example Alice Water’s Cal-French, Mario Batali’s Americanized Italian, David Myer’s Cal-French-Japanese, or even David Lentz and Suzanne Goin’s Baltimore-French-Japanese. When it comes to being an American chef, it’s all about expressing your local ideas and borrowing from the culinary masters of other cultures.

When you come from a country known to the world as the great American melting pot, it can be difficult pin-pointing the truly American dishes. But if you start to ask around, you’ll find there are a number of dishes that American’s clearly call their own.

A Culinary Education

After my recent trip to Michigan (and multiple trips to Zingerman’s and all of its many incarnations), I’m starting to understand what makes American food great.

The Roadhouse, the seventh in the family of Zingerman’s food-friendly ventures, offers diners a chance to eat their way through many of the culinary traditions and regional cooking styles of America.

Diners can grab take out from the cleverly re-tooled and permanently parked silver bullet camper for drive-through, or may linger at a table in the spacious restaurant that offers bar seating, multiple dining areas, a back patio and a private dining room.

Main dining room

back patio — Zingerman's Roadhouse Back Patio

The ever-friendly and well-trained Zingerman’s staff seem as if they’ve been waiting all day just to happily guide you to your table or barstool. The dining room is open and inviting with its kitchy salt-and-pepper displays, open kitchen and hand-printed music posters lining the walls.

Drink Menu at Zingerman's Roadhouse — The Roadhouse Drink Menu

In the tradition of Zingerman’s, the drinks are handcrafted and are made with the local produce, freshly squeezed fruit juice and house-made marachino cherries. The bartenders smile as they muddle and mix handcrafted cocktails like Mojitos or their signature cocktail the Knickerbocker, made with Brugel Dominican Dark Rum, Bol’s Orange Curacao, fresh raspberries and freshly squeezed lemon juice.

The education begins

The first course in American cuisine begins with Chef Alex’s appetizer sampler.

Sample Plate at the Roadhouse — Appetizer sampler

In this one dish, diners get a cross-country tour of flavors. Starting with the South and its hush puppies (made with organic yellow and blue corn) and the moist and tender roadhouse ribs, our palates travel to Baltimore and its sweet and salty crab cakes. The appetizer plate tour ends at the Tex-Mex border with a cheesy, wild mushroom quesadilla. Other not to be missed appetizers are the hand-cut sweet potato fries with a spicy mayo and Ari’s Pimento Cheese, a classic southern starter of celery “chips” served with a dip of aged Vermont cheddar, mayo and chopped pimentos.

Sweet potato fries and spicy mayo — Sweet Potato Fries and Spicy Mayo

Getting an advanced degree

Instruction in American culinary appreciation is taken up a notch at the Roadhouse with its entrees. The North Carolina pulled pork is moist and rich with salty sweet flavors from almost an entire day’s worth of roasting. The meat is hand-pulled, chopped and blended with a spicy vinegar sauce and served with Michigan-grown mashed potatoes and served with Southern style braised greens. The Texas Cabrito, a slow-smoked, hand-pulled, free-range goat, with a special basting sauce, is both earthy and moist.

After eating the Roadhouse Buttermilk-Fried, Free-Range Chicken, I really began to appreciate my nationality.

Buttermilk fried chicken — Zingerman's Roadhouse Buttermilk Fried Chicken

Fried chicken nirvana is discovered once it is delivered to the table in a paper-wrapped picnic box. Thanks to the local, Amish farm-raised, free-range chicken, the meat tastes more real than any fast food chain’s ever could. The meat is moist and plump while the buttermilk batter is crispy and light–offering the perfect counterpoint to the delicate earthiness of the meat. Sides of local mashed potatoes, brown gravy and yellow mustard slaw make the dish an American inspiration.

My husband was silent—with the occasional moans of culinary happiness–as he savored every bite of his full rack of Neiman ranch pork ribs. Served on a generous portion of creamy grits, the long cooked ribs are so moist and tender it doesn’t take much more than a gentle nudge of your fingers to get the sweet and savory meat to fall off the bone.

The side dishes are equally impressive as the entrees they support. Take for example the creamed corn made from John Cope’s dried sweet corn, made from John Cope’s dried sweet corn, a classic staple in Pennsylvania since the 1900’s.

Picked at the peak of sweetness, the dried corn not only imparts sweetness to the dish, but also gives a playful texture that works well with thin bath of cream. The macaroni and cheese, an American staple, gets its proper respects with an assortment regional takes on the classic idea. Our favorite was the Roadhouse Macaroni & Cheese, made with a 2 year old Vermont raw-milk cheddar and the Martelli family’s artisanal macaroni from Tuscany.

Rounding out the regional education in American fare, are the decadent desserts.

Trip to Zingerman's Roadhouse — Ari's Donut Sundae

Ari’s Original Doughnut Sundae, is a donut smothered in a bourbon-caramel sauce, vanilla gelato, whipped cream and Virginia peanuts. The Magic Brownie Sundae, a quintessential American classic, is a Bakehouse brownie drowned in chocolate sauce, vanilla gelato, whipped cream and toasted pecans.But it was the pecan pie, a pile of toasted pecans surrounded by a rich brown sugar custard made from unrefined Mauritian brown sugar, that made me want to stand up and sing the national anthem.

A trip to Zingerman’s Roadhouse is not only a great place to eat, it also offers the observant guest an education in quintessential American food and what makes it great. Suddenly, I’m really proud to be an American.

Zingerman’s Roadhouse
2501 Jackson Ave.
Ann Arbor, MI 48103
(734) 663-3663

June 26November 14

Keeping it real

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the idea of being a “real” cook. I mean, can you be a real cook if you use pre-prepared items? Do real cooks use pasta sauces from a jar? Do real cooks use frozen vegetables? Do real cooks buy frozen pie dough?

Nancy Silverton, one of my chef heroes, believes that you don’t have to make everything from scratch in order to be a good cook. As a matter of fact, her newest book is based on this premise.

In Twist of the Wrist, she shows home cooks how to make healthy and delicious meals at home with a handful of fresh ingredients and pre-made items that can be found at the local store. So if bread maven Nancy Silverton says it’s okay to cook at home with pre-made items, surely that means you can be a real cook and use store-bought, prepped items…Right?

If you happened to read the great article my friend, writing partner (more about that someday soon) and fellow food blogger, Leah of Spicy Salty Sweet wrote about trying out a recipe from the Twist of the Wrist cookbook, you’d probably end up saying “NO” to that question.

Leah is an incredible cook and when it comes to making a meal, she almost always prefers making everything from scratch. And when I say everything, I mean everything. She makes her own pasta, her own pizza dough, her own ice cream…But then, Leah self-admittedly calls herself a kitchen masochist, which makes me believe that maybe there is hope for the prepared food aided cook. Maybe a real cook like Leah might believe you don’t have to cook everything at home in order to consider yourself a “real” cook. Maybe.

Okay, so I’m obsessing

The reason I’ve been thinking about this subject, is because I recently made a pie with store bought frozen pie crust. Now, if you’ve been reading Food Woolf lately, you’ll know that I’m trying to get over my fear of pastry. Which hasn’t necessarily been easy. I’ve messed up measurements, I’ve had to bake and rebake a cobbler until I got it right.

So when I bought the ingredients for a pie and put together a recipe that was inspired by Fine Furious Life, a fellow food blogger, I was really excited to go into work at the restaurant and tell the girls in the pastry department about it.

“Oh really?” they smiled. “What’d you put in it?”

I rattled off the ingredients. They nodded with interest. Until I told them I used a frozen pie crust. Their eyes went dim. Did I just say “frozen pie crust”? In the pastry department? What was I thinking?

I gulped back my embarrassment as I skulked out of Pastry. I was crestfallen. Until I spied this month’s Bon Appetit. In the June issue, they featured a rustic plum and port tart recipe that, get this, called for a refrigerated pie crust.

A ha!

Victory, I thought! Bon Apetit appeals to real cooks, right? They recommend prepared pie dough. Surely I must be taking all this prepared food item stuff way too seriously.

Yeah. Seriously.

What follows is this delicious, easy, fast and fresh Rhubarb, Nectarine and Cardamom Pie. It’s really great fresh from the oven with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Be sure to drizzle a bit of freshly ground cardamom and some Maldon sea salt on the ice cream to make it really special.

Rhubarb, Nectarine and Cardamom Tart
adapted from a recipe from Fine Furious Life
Makes one pie

Two pack of pre-made pie crusts. I used organic pie shells from Whole Foods.
1 1/2 pounds rhubarb, cut in 1-inch pieces
4 nectarines seeded and sliced in 1-inch cubes
1 nectarine cut into wedges
1/2 cup sugar
1 orange, juiced
12 fresh cardamom pods, opened, seeded and ground
2 tblsp raspberry jelly

Bonus points if you use:
Maldon sea salt
A pint of vanilla ice cream
A handful of cardamom pods, opened, seeded and ground

Prepping the cardamom:
To open the cardamom pods, use the back of your knife or a mallet. Take out the black, flavorful seeds and put them into your mortar. Hand grind with the pestle until the cardamom is more like a rough powder.

For the filling:
Combine rhubarb, nectarines, sugar, orange juice and cardamom in a bowl. Transfer to a large skillet. Stir over medium-high heat until liquid starts to bubble. Reduce heat to medium. Cover and simmer until rhubarb is almost tender, stirring very gently in order to keep rhubarb intact. About 8 minutes.

Drain rhubarb and nectarines well, reserving the sugared juice. Add the juice from bowl to skillet. Boil the juices until it becomes a syrup or a medium-to-thick reduction. Mix in preserves. Cool. Very gently add the rhubarb and nectarines to the mixture.

Preheat oven to 375F. Follow the directions for the frozen pie crust (thaw and pre-bake one of the two pie crusts. Reserve the other for the lattice top). Once the pie crust is cooked (about 20 minutes), add the fruit mixture. Line the top of the pie with the nectarine wedges.

Prepare the lattice top:
Carefully transfer the second, uncooked pie crust dough onto waxed paper. Cut one inch strips into the dough and lay across the top of the pie in a lattice pattern.

Bake for about 40 minutes, or until filling is bubbling thickly and crust is golden brown.

NOTE: This post was amended on 6/29

June 3November 14

Inspirational Dishes

Eating at a great restaurant is inspiring.

If you can get beyond the the daily challenges of the service industry, working at a great restaurant is galvanizing.

While working in a great restaurant: I met and fell in love with my husband. I found some of my best friends. I discovered (and tasted) wines from all over the world. I became a foodie. I learned how to make a miserable guest happy. I unraveled the mystery of cheese making. I gained an acute sense of taste and smell. I sampled a panoply of dishes and made them my own.

This spring time antipasti, is one of them.

This is one of those great restaurant dishes that once I tasted it, I needed to know how to make it. The following is my interpretation of the dish we currently serve at the restaurant.

Peas Mint and (home made) Greek Yogurt Cheese

3 tablespoons (a full palm’s worth) of Greek Yogurt Cheese
(Note: see previous post for the full recipe). To save time, goat or sheep’s milk cheese will do.
1 cup of sweet peas (in the pod), juilienned
1⁄4 cup red onion, diced
Juice of one lemon
3 tablespoons of a good red wine vinegar
1⁄4 cup Extra virgin olive oil
Salt and freshly ground pepper
Maldon sea salt (or a good finishing salt)

*Begin preparation of Greek Yogurt cheese one day before serving with salad!

Toss the julienned peas and onion with the olive oil, lemon juice and vinegar.

Season with salt and pepper to taste. Put on plate and serve with a small round of your home made Greek Yogurt Cheese. Finish with a drizzle of olive oil and pinch of Maldon sea salt.

February 4November 14

Eating from the Super Bowl

I don’t follow sports. So for me, Super Bowl Sunday is a social event based around eating food, drinking beer and watching angry men yell at the TV. As non-holiday, sporting based events go, Super Bowl parties are cool.

Back east, super bowl Sunday is all about drinking domestic beer and eating subs. A ‘sub’, of course, is shorthand for a Submarine sandwich—usually a twelve-inch marvel of bread, heaping piles of meat, a sprinkling of vegetables (think iceberg lettuce and mealy tomatoes) and some sort of strong flavored sauce. In my almost 10 years in LA, I’ve been to plenty of Super Bowl parties that featured hamburgers fresh off the grill, a smattering of Bud light and handcrafted beers, bowls of chips, and huge aluminum take out containers filled with Mexican take-out.

But never, in all of my years of Super Bowl parties, have I experienced anything like the culinary get togethers that my friends Chef Jason and Miho Travi throw. Their Super Bowl Sunday fetes includes champagne, Osetra caviar, and savoy fois gras on toast. Granted, Jason and Miho aren’t your typical Super Bowl Sunday hosts. Jason and Miho, are the chefs behind Fraiche Restaurant, Los Angeles Magazine’s best restaurant of 2007.

I should also mention, that Jason is without a doubt one of the biggest Patriots fans I know. Born and raised in a town just south of Boston, Jason and his season ticket-holding father are so dedicated to the sport they have been known to fly to key games to route for their teams. And route for the Pats they do. Like they were family.

The first time Jason and Miho invited my husband and I over to their house for a Super Bowl party, I had very low expectations. Instead of chips and dip, Jason offered us caviar on tiny pancakes. Instead of cans of Bud, they poured rose champagne. It didn’t take me long to realize that in Jason and Miho I had met the right people to teach me how to truly enjoy watching a game of football.

So when Jason and Miho invited my husband and I over to their house for the Big Game this year, I spend a lot of time thinking about what kind of food we would bring to the party. Wanting to bring over something elegant and easy, I went to a specialty cheese shop and found a small jar of the funky and oozing St. Marcillen cheese, a flavorful Brie de Nangis and a bagette from the Bread Bar. Instead of carrying in the traditional six pack of watery beer, we brought a selection of cork topped, hand crafted Trappist beers by Chimay and pear cider.

As the game played, we enjoyed a Rabbit terrine, fois gras on brioche toast, and Italian cheeses with a sweet Moustarda di frutta. As we cheered the Patriots and their solid lead, Miho offered us delicious home made chicken and beef tamales. The tamales were so incredible I watched my husband, Hans, eat one after another while never taking his eyes off the TV screen. Our newly made friends from Nook Restaurant, brought home made salsas (spicy roasted red pepper, a spicy crèma and sweet spicy tomatillo salsa).

Later, as the game was drawing to a close and it looked like the Patriots were going to win, Jason whipped up some perfectly cooked scrambled eggs and topped some brioche toast with it.

He generously handed out a tin of Petrossian caviar and a spoon to each couple and wished us happy eating. But, as we slipped the first silky bite of eggs on eggs into our happy mouths, things turned ugly for our team. We watched in horror as NY got control of the ball and quickly jumped ahead of us in points. We stared at the screen in horror as the last thirty seconds ticked away.

The party ended rather quickly after that. Jason shook his head with shocked disappointment and everyone else paced back and forth in thwarted silence. We watched in shock as NY fans crowded the field and celebrated their victory over New England.

Though the brutal end to the game was more than a little upsetting to all, the party itself was incredibly enjoyable. I have to hand it to Travi, his food and his passion for the game has made me a huge Patriots fan.

I’m hungry for a rematch.

January 8November 14

Soffritto: (Trying to) Learn from a Master–Part II

BACK HOME
I unload my farmer’s market finds and start prepping. I quickly glance at my copy of Soffrito. The recipe for Ragu is about seven pages—including a lovely picture of a finished Ragu and a three page essay on meat sauces. I force myself to skim the dense paragraphs describing the history of meat sauces and stop at the list of ingredients for the Ragu.

1 1/4 lbs of beefsteak (sirloin, rib eye or round steak)
1 pork sausage
2 chicken livers
1 chicken neck
1 large or 2 small red onion, minced
1 carrot, peeled and minced
1 large stalk celery, minced
½ cup extra virgin olive oil
½ cup dry red wine
salt
2 fresh or canned tomatoes, peeled
4 cups water
1 piece of lemon zest, cut into thin strips
2-3 tablespoons of butter for dressing the pasta
1 cup Parmesan cheese for serving

Though the list of ingredients calls for beefsteak, it isn’t until I start reading the actual recipe that I realize I was supposed to ask the butcher to mince the meat for me. Upon further reading, Vitali suggests strongly that the butcher must only put the meat through the mincer once in order to “prevent excessive flaccidity.” I try to imagine myself returning to the meat counter with my sirloin and asking the old man for a shot at the mincer. I made a fool of myself in front of him once today. There is no way I’m going back there.

Luckily, a few sentences later, Vitali says a good home mincing is also an ideal for a ragu, but warns the reader that it is not only time consuming, but requires “a certain skill.” Hoping I have the innate skills needed, I commence mincing.

Based on the size of my dice, I decide I have quite possibly succeeded in making a somewhat proper mince. I begin my soffritto and heed Vitali’s advice to do nothing but observe the cooking process of these key three ingredients.

I marvel at the smells of this holy trinity
and admire the way the heat and oil changes the texture of the vegetables over time.

What was once clearly separate becomes one in velvety texture. It is at this point, when the soffritto gets to the “moment before it burns” I toss in the meat and let it brown.

As I do I read Vitali’s advice with the hunger of a starved pupil.

“Don’t be seduced into forgetting what you are doing and letting browning turn to burning. In this recipe you work at full attention, monitoring all operations…as the browning of both the soffritto and the meat should stretch your attention to the maximum. You will need all your senses, including the olfactory one, to prevent disaster.”

I tell myself Vitali is my greatest teacher yet, and continue on. If anyone can teach an Anglo Saxon how to cook like an old school Italian, it’s Vitali. She describes the browning process as one of making the meat “suffer”. Without browning, she explains, the meat will taste like it was boiled.

Sure. Brown the meat. Got that. Check.

I brown the meat for 15 minutes, waiting for the tell tale “crust” to appear on the meat and on the bottom of the pan. When this begins to happen, I add ½ a cup of wine and let it cook off.

With the wine cooked off, I begin to add my two cans of peeled tomatoes.

After adding the first can I realize I have been using the wrong pan for the job.

I re-read the recipe and discover that Vitali calls for a 10 inch diameter POT, not a 10 inch in diameter PAN. Suddenly, I am forced to move all cooking operations into the right sized container.

***It is this moment here, when things began to go astray, that I should have realized there was something wrong. I should have turned off the heat, stepped away from the stove and re-read Vitali’s 7 page recipe. Had I done that, dear reader, I might have discovered that the recipe called for TWO TOMATOES. Not TWO CANS of peeled tomatoes. It’s embarrassing to admit, but I definitely have problems with paying full attention to the little (and some times big) details. Just ask my husband. He’d be the first one to say with a smile that I am one quick moving person of the Aries persuasion. ***

With my meat and two cans (blush) of peeled tomatoes transferred to a pot, I am ready to add the 4 cups of water to the sauce. I lower the flame to minimum, add salt, pepper and lemon zest and leave it for 2 hours.

At the end of the cooking time (no wonder it took my sauce about an hour more to cook down), I remove the chicken neck and pull the meat off the bone. I toss the bones and return the chicken neck meat to the sauce. Delish! While I cook the pasta, I heat up my oven to 100 degrees so I can warm my pasta dishes.

When the pasta is al dente, drain and save some pasta water for thickening the sauce. Pour a ladleful of sauce into the bottom of the pasta bowl with a dab of butter.

Add a serving of drained pasta in the pasta bowl and add more sauce. Turn the pasta with a fork and spoon so as to blend it and serve immediately with grated Parmesan cheese.

Though the meal was a success (the house smelled like Casalinga a favorite Italian trattoria), I know I sti
ll have much to learn. The ragu would have been a true meat sauce had I followed the directions to a T. What I ended up with was a saucy meat sauce.

I have to admit, this dish as prepared, was amazing. Next time, I shall try it with the requested TWO TOMATOES and see what the difference is!

December 9November 14

For Your Consideration…

Casey Affleck bad diner — Image from Gone Baby Gone

It’s Thursday night and the restaurant is packed. It’s nine o’clock and there’s a line out the door. The manager’s i-pod shuffles through a rock set. Diners yell to hear each other. Servers like me, bend and spin around crowded tables.

Upstairs in the office, it’s quiet, except for the constant ringing of the phone lines.

A solitary receptionist hits the blinking lights that represent anxious people in search of a reservation.

“Thank you for calling _____, please hold, thank you for calling______please hold, thank you for calling _____, please hold. ” She saves breathing for after the last blinking light is touched.

She inhales and clicks onto a line. The receptionist can tell from the crackle of traffic and men talking in the background, that she’s on speaker phone.

“Thank you for holding. Can I help you?”

The voice on the other end yells to be heard. “Yeah. Hi. This is Casey Affleck. I need a table for four in fifteen minutes.”

The receptionist explains that the restaurant is booked. That the reservations are booked one month to the day in advance. The actor insists. He’s Casey Affleck. He’s in the neighborhood. He needs a table now.

The receptionist recalls the name, but can’t quite place his face. Other than being Ben’s brother, who is Casey Affleck again? The receptionist calls the manager for help. Is there something that can be done?

While the curly haired woman waits for an answer, she IMDB’s the actor’s name. So, he’s been in the Ocean 11 movies. That’s right, she thinks. He’s the funny side kick guy. Oh, and he was in that Boston movie about a girl getting kidnapped. Never did see that movie, she muses.

The manager steps in and suggests there could be an opening. A reservation has no-showed. He’ll do his best to squeeze in Affleck, along with the rest of the walk-in’s. Before the receptionist hangs up, the manager offers one small caveat: “Tell him he might have to wait a while.”

A while later, the curly haired actor (and his mini-posse) is seated.

A server like me, but not me, approaches the table. She greets Casey Affleck and his friends with a smile. They look up from their menus with Los Angeles upper crust disdain. Casey Affleck nods to the server. She blushes a little when he stares at her, all intense with his semi-famous dark eyes.

“Listen,” he says. “People usually send out appetizers for me when I come in. You can let the kitchen know I’m a vegan.”

The server does a double take. What did he just say? The server spins away from the table, dazed.

The server approaches the kitchen and pulls the chef aside. She repeats verbatim what Casey Affleck–the actor–has just told her.

“So…Uh, are we going to send him out some beets or something?” the waitress asks.

The chef calmly nods his head. “Hell no.”

_______________________

For your consideration…