I picked up this “Farmer’s Cheese” on a recommendation from Tim the weekend before last. I was having some people over for my last pizza party in my old home, which had an oven modified to cook at 800F+. Looking to do a tomato/cheese appetizer, Tim told me they were getting ready to use this Chapel Hill Creamery in a dish at Quinones that weekend. He also mentioned that they had yet to pair mozzarella with tomatoes. Not that they don’t go well together, but there are other cheeses out there to discover that can work just as well. Which reminds me, Tim said they have some crazy good local burrata arriving soon. Anyways, this fresh round of tangy, soft cheese with a curd-like texture on the interior certainly did the trick. In fact, more than one person commented on its deliciousness.

The Black Krim tomatoes are from Star Provision’s Local Farmstand. Also really nice, but I wish I could easily find heirlooms for less than $5-6/lb in town. My parents get them for half that in Greenville.

I can’t believe I only took one pizza photo. And it’s blurry. Pizzas came out above average, short of excellent. I prepared dozens of toppings. One of my favorites was a white pie with rendered bacon fat, low moisture mozzarella, parmesan, lardons, and garlic. One person asked for a pie with some chili oil that I made over a year ago…just a splash of it adds some great heat.

Kidding.

Maybe.

So we’re up in Roswell awaiting the start of said game night (side note: holy crap, I’m old now) and we randomly choose to dine at Bistro VG, which is formerly known as Van Gogh’s. You may not believe this, but this apparently super popular suburban restaurant was at the end of a strip mall. We sat at the bar as it appeared that getting a table without a reservation on a Saturday night is generally out of the question, then ordered a few items from the very enthusiastic bartender.

I realize traditionally a cheese course comes after the entree, but we started with three selections from their fairly large list. They really did have some good options. While the soft French selections I chose weren’t quite warm or runny enough, I was quite happy to start with this.

We also shared the beet salad, except, wait a minute… they went RICOTTA! The ubiquitous goat cheese/beet combo does get a little old. The ricotto was creamy and salty and delicious with the earthy beets, and you can’t see from these blurry ass photos, but it was a mix of red and golden beets with the frisee.

The pile of hanger with allegedly caramelized cauliflower was my main selection. The cauliflower were heavy and soft and soggy, far from the rich charred flavor and crispy edges desired from the cabbage relative. The hanger, while overly chewy in parts (I’ve been spoiled by the beautiful Flannery hangers), had the mouth watering game-like flavor I so crave.

Weirdly, some slices were overcooked and others were cooked perfectly. It was probably 75% medium rare slices and 25% well done. I presume the ends of the hanger got overcooked but they threw them on there anways, which ends up looking undesirable on the plate.

There were a few misses, but the people were super nice and prices were about $5-7 cheaper than what you’d see the same entree cost around Atlanta. If you’re OTP I’d definitely give them a shot if the wait at Outback is too long.

Just joshin’, the wait at Outback is always too long, go to Bistro VG.

If you haven’t had the pleasure of meeting Tim, allowing him to give you a slight push down the rabbit hole that is (stinky, creamy, funky, earthy) artisan cheese, now’s your chance.

Last week was my first visit to Woody’s, even though one year during college I lived less than a mile away. I tried to visit numerous times, but they were often closed, or when I would see them open, I wouldn’t have cash, which is all they accept.

Now under new ownership, the hours have expanded greatly, so a visit to Woody’s is much easier to schedule. Cash is still required though. When I was heading to Ansley to spend my somewhat hard earned dollars on grape juice and remembered Woody’s was nearby, I decided to see what all the hubbub was about.

The place only had a few diners and no line, so I was able to promptly place my sweaty money down and order. Cheese steak with whiz. I was quickly told that whiz was not recommended. So I acquiesced.

Despite the brutal heat, the covered porch wasn’t too hot, so I sat outside. I noticed a young couple drinking some beer on the patio, which looked like a fabulous idea, but when I went back inside to make my frosty lager purchase, I was told those smart folks had brought them from home. Woody’s is trying to get a license to serve, but the school across the street is giving them gruff.

Around the end of that conversation my cheesesteak was ready. It sure did look good, no?

It’s doesn’t please me to report that I was disappointed. While not altogether unpleasant, I had higher expectations. The chopped beef was very unsavory, fairly bland. No salt, no greasy beef flavor. That fact, coupled with the quickness with which my order was prepared, makes me wonder if I got an older batch of ribeye that had been hanging out for a while on the griddle. Not quite as offensive, but notable, the bread was slightly stale and a little dense.

I’ll give it another try, because it wasn’t offensive or anything like that, but my future expectations have been slightly adjusted from major cheesesteak destination, to potential lunchspot when I’m in the area.

Last weekend I did something I’ve been itching to try; I cooked a challenging meal with another person. I’ve slightly assisted people in the kitchen before, or vice versa, but I wanted to take on an ambitious undertaking from recipe creation to plating with someone else and see how successful we could be. When Biskuit was willing to participate, and offered up his very dining-party-friendly home, I jumped at the chance.

One of my faults in the kitchen is that I often take on too much and I often run out of time or get frazzled when it comes time for the final push to put everything out on the table. Trying to finish a sauce, sear the meat, warm up a side dish, and not forget that I have bread in the oven all at the same time can be challenging and I tend to screw one or two things up.

For this meal we took on a six course menu from Thomas Keller’s French Laundry Cookbook. Anyone familiar with this book knows his recipes are neither quick nor relatively easy, so they would be a good test to see how the two of us would work together.

I couldn’t have been much happier with the results.

Each dish was planned out better than I’ve ever done on my own. Grocery shopping was quicker. Doing our prep on Saturday and Sunday, glass of wine in hand, Beastie Boys blaring, was fun.

When it came time to plate, dishes came together fast. Every garnish was remembered. I was less stressed, and the meal was delicious.

– THE MEAL RUN-THROUGH –

Plating was set up ahead of time for each dish. I don’t do this enough, but now know it’s a must-do.

We started with the gruyere gougeres. Super easy, they’re fantastic right out of the oven.

Next up, the famous salmon cornets. Creating the cones was a cumbersome task, with multiple failures along the way. Then once they were done, when it came time to fill them with the creme fraiche, followed by the sashimi grade salmon from BHFM, many of the delicate cones fell apart.

I had the cornets at Per Se a few months ago, and only now do I respect the effort involved in this tiny, beautiful dish.

(This photo, and a few others are by Rowdy Food, as I couldn’t take many photos while we were working).

Next up – cucumber “cappellini” (cucumber strands textured like pasta), pickled Kumamoto oysters from Star Provisions, caviar, and dill.

Very briny and acidic, with nice texture, it was probably better looking that it tasted, but it’s worth it for presentation value alone.

The lobster crepe with carrot-ginger emulsion and pea shoots (Peas ‘n Carrots) may have been the star of the evening. The mascarpone rich lobster filling flavor could have been lost in the sweet sauce, had the mixture not been fortified with the lobster glace we made by boiling the stock of three lobsters down from roughly one quart of water to three tablespoons.

This dish is a keeper.

Next up – rack of lamb (double cut, frenched) with bean cassoulet. It took me roughly an hour to butcher three racks into this cut, having to remove every other bone in the rack, then clean (french) the bone end. It was a new process to me, and I was glad I did it. I would feel much more comfortable doing it again. The first rack took me forever, but I got progressively faster.

The lightly cooked beans consisted of wax, beans, October, fava, marrow, and adzuki beans. The first four were quickly blanched, while the latter two were dry beans that were gently simmered until al dente. The dish is finished with rosemary oil and a lamb “quick” sauce, which actually took Biskuit numerous hours late into Saturday night to complete. When Thomas Keller writes “quick” in quotes, it’s a tongue in cheek notion.

I love beans, so I was a big fan of this dish.

Cheese course – Monte Enebro from Star Provisions, golden beets layered on both sides of matchsticks of red beets, beet reduction, and radish micro greens.

The lady at the juice bar at Whole Foods Buckhead looked at me like I was crazy when I said I wanted a full 20oz cup of plain beet juice, but the reduction was worth it. The whole dish was amazing, another keeper.

Dessert – strawberry and champagne terrine (separate layers) with creme fraiche and mint. We were interested to see how this one would turn out, and I thought it was surprisingly refreshing and enjoyable.

While this meal was obviously an undertaking, I can’t get over how unstressed I was when everyone arrived. I totally attribute this to working with Biskuit, and thank him immensely. He definitely did more work than me, especially in terms of cleaning up, so I owe him one. I can’t wait for the next cooking marathon with my friends.

Thanks to the famous Savory Exposure for taking photos with our cameras while we worked.

Also thanks to everyone that brought some nice wines.

Fresh off my trip to New York City, and completely guilt-ridden over the amount of money I spent, this past week I tried to eat as much food from my pantry as possible. One evening I made a quick, spicy tomato sauce with chickpeas over orecchiette with parmesan shavings. It was comforting.

I didn’t use the whole can of Roma tomatoes or chickpeas, so the next morning I was trying to think of what I could use them for, when I recalled the recipe for “eggs in purgatory” I had read in the March issue of BA. The recipe calls for artichoke hearts, which I didn’t have, but I had everything else and figured chickpeas would make a fine replacement.

This recipe couldn’t be simpler. First I diced the potatoes and boiled them. Meanwhile I sautéed onion, then garlic and thyme, then added the tomatoes, covered the sauce pan, and cooked it for ten minutes. After that, I added the potatoes and capers and cooked for a few more minutes. I estimated all ingredients as I was just cooking this for myself but also wanted to use up all my tomatoes and chickpeas. 

I transferred the sauce to a small baking dish and cracked an egg in it. Two eggs would have been better.

It cooked at 375F for twelve minutes.

Then I hit it with Parmigiano-Reggiano.

What a delicious and hearty breakfast. I loved the acidic zing of the capers. Artichokes would be a nice touch, though it was plenty flavorful and substantial without them. You could easily make the sauce ahead of time and whip this dish up in less than fifteen minutes, twelve of which are inactive so you could go take a shower, watch YouTube, make coffee…you get the point.

Bon Appétit Series Background Recap: I was tired of reading the magazine each month, saying, “Oh that looks great, I’ll make that”, then the magazine ends up in the cupboard or trash, never to been seen again. Never more! Now I’m holding myself publicly accountable; each month I will cook at least one recipe from Bon Appétit and post it on here.

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The small gap between dreamy, pillow-like gnocchi with a creamy interior and lump, dense, potato bombs is the epitome of the dichotomy between simplicity and perfection that exists in Italian cooking. Traditional gnocchi are potato and flour, shaped into a dumpling, and boiled. Definitely sounds easy.

But just like pasta, gnocchi is an Italian art form, a deliberate process all the way through. It’s easy to make bad risotto. It’s even easier to make crappy gnocchi. My suggestions for making decent gnocchi are the same as I would offer for risotto – respect the process. Keep the potato mixture light and don’t overwork it. Add flour until the dough is that perfect balance of workable and sticky. Take great care to not under or over cook the gnocchi. And keep at it. Similar to pizza dough, pasta, or risotto, I really think an experienced hand makes a difference, and I need much more gnocchi experience. I think my next purchase will be a ricer to get even lighter potatoes. Have you tried making gnocchi? Any good tips you’ve accumulated along the way?

I started by cooking my russets in an oven, then I scooped out the flesh and pushed it through the food mill attachment of my food processor. Avoid gummy potatoes (read: NO stand mixer) at all costs. Then gently mix in the potato with the egg and flour using an fork.

After kneading the dough for as little time as possible, I started forming my gnocchi. I highly recommend purchasing a dough scraper for this part if you don’t have one. You can buy a board to form the impressions on each gnocchi, or just use a fork like I did.

An industrial baking sheet really comes in handy sometimes, even though this guy doesn’t fit in my oven. It’s perfect for holding dozens of dumplings.

Prior to forming the gnocchi, I made the mushroom ragu, sans the pork because of a particular vegetarian. The sauce would have been much more savory and balanced with the slow simmered pork, but the addition of the porcini and crimini mushrooms made it a nice variation from a simple marinara.

I plated it with an obligatory sprinkle of parmigiano-reggiano, from @timthecheeseman, of course.

The gnocchi? Not the best ever. More on the dense side than the mushy side. I need a lighter dough, more uniform sized gnocchi (for even cooking), and to probably boil them even less than I did.

Enjoyably, each moment spent in the kitchen is an education, every new experiment an edible work in progress.

First dish – homemade burgers

I do own a meat grinder, but it’s vintage and the blades aren’t sharp, so I opted to try a food processor method I read about on Serious Eats’ A Hamburger Today website. I cut short rib, sirloin tips, and chuck into 1-2” cubes and put them in the freezer for 20 minutes. This gets the fat cold and firm so the blade can deal with it.

Then I pulsed the meat a few times.

I formed a fairly loose burger and seasoned with salt and pepper. I seared it in a smoking hot cast iron skillet, then turned down the heat and continued to cook for a few minutes, adding cheese on top along the way.

The resulting medium-rare burger was fantastic. The griddled exterior was crispy and flavorful, and the burger was fatty, tender, and deliciously greasy. I’m fairly sure I won’t be buying ground beef for burgers anymore. The cost was roughly the same, the flavor was unquestionably better, I can control the fat content, and as I’m comfortable eating even Publix beef medium rare, there’s no reason I shouldn’t be comfortable eating a freshly ground burger that way.

Next meal up – panini. I started by making a coleslaw, with some homemade chile oil as the base. I’ve had this batch a few months, and just a spoonful can be added to any number of dishes for improved heat and color.

The sauce was: 2 Tbsp of chile oil, 1T soy sauce, 1 tsp sesame oil, 1t fish sauce, 1t Shaoxing rice wine.

For the panini filler – meats from Patak. Boston butt, salamis, and ham.

Stacked on ciabatta. Ciabatta is perfect for a panini.

See?

Next meal – 20 minute mac

Start by boiling your noodles per instructions. Meanwhile shred some cheese. Sauté chopped onions, garlic, and one small can of green chiles in a small amount of olive oil. Add 1-2T of flour, whisk rapidly. Slow pour in 1 cup milk, a bit at a time, whisking to create the roux. Add 1 cup cream after the milk, again, slow. Once all the liquid is incorporated, add the cheese. If it’s too runny, add more cheese. Too thick, add more cream.

Stir in noodles, place in oven safe serving dish, top with more cheese, broil.

Next dish – Ad Hoc Roasted Chicken

Let the chicken air dry in the refrigerator for up to 1 day, then rest on the counter for 1-2 hours before cooking. Truss. Set chicken on top of diced root vegetables. Rub butter or oil all over the skin. Season with salt and pepper.

Cook per recipe (linked it above)

Yum. Skin was the crispiest I’ve ever made. Slightly over cooked, but still acceptable.

Save the chicken fat/juices in the skillet with the leftover veggies. For a snack, reduce that liquid to create a pan gravy and pour over the vegetables.

Next – Muss and Turner’s small plates.

Squid, in a green olive based “salsa”. Sauce was rocking. Portion was huge.

Szechuan beef. Small portion, high quality, tender beef. Very nice.

Now I’m hungry.

The Neapolitan (or tongue twisting Neo-Neapolitan) is my true pizza love, but something about the buttery, flaky crust, stuffed full of cheese and toppings, quite literally a “pie”, was calling my name.

I Googled a recipe for Gino’s East (a pizzeria in Chicago I’ve heard of, not sure where) and of course found a website and video detailing how to replicate it. Later I found another version, with a great picture. I followed the recipe for the most part, with a few variations due to lack of ingredients and overall forgetfulness.

I mixed the dough as described, though I didn’t have yellow food coloring. I also forgot the cornmeal. My dough was probably too sticky – it should almost be wet, but not sticky, due to the high amount of cornmeal and oil. I let it rise in my oven from about 8AM until that evening when I cooked the pizza.

The dough will quickly rise and the texture will get very puffy. I punched it down once around lunch time, and let it rise again.

My quick, standby pizza sauce is very easy. It’s an uncooked tomato sauce, which will work just fine on normal pizzas, especially if cooking with high heat. With a Chicago pizza, which will cook for a long time, I think the raw sauce works even better.

It’s simply a can of pureed/crushed Roma tomatoes (you can crush whole tomatoes if you want), with garlic powder, onion powder, oregano, red pepper, and sometimes I use a microplane to add just a tablespoon of good parmesan cheese. Don’t store your sauce in the fridge, or if making it earlier, take it out about an hour before cooking to let it come up to room temperature.

For the toppings, I purchased some Tuscan sausage from Star Provisions. I sliced them in an obvious phallic nature, then cooked them a few minutes each side.

I used Sargento cheese for this pizza. I think you’re going to get better results with mozzarella like this, versus fresh mozzarella in water. The high moisture content of real deal mozzarella will cause the cheese to break down, and the pizza will be too wet for the slices to hold together.

I also purchased pepperoni from Star Provisions. It was just a few bucks for these 10 slices, so worth it.

When I was ready to cook, I greased my cast iron skillet heavily with butter. I rolled out my dough, did my best to throw it evenly into the pan, then trimmed the sides. Start the layering process with the cheese. I did an even layer of Sargento, then used some shredded mozzarella to ensure an even cheese layer.

After the cheese I added the meat, then a healthy dose of sauce. The pizza cooked on the lower rack for roughly 40 minutes. I started at 350 as instructed, but it didn’t seem to be cooking fast enough so I bumped it up to 400. I also broiled it for a minute before taking it out and letting it rest for a solid fifteen to twenty minutes.

You can see the sides pulled away, making it very easy to cut.

The pizza was very gloppy, even after 20 minutes rest.

A few notes on this pizza:

• I could have used more oil in the dough, more cornmeal, and I could have added more oil to the pan. Oil is your friend when it comes to this type of crust.
• I probably could have used just a bit less sauce, but the cooked sauce was delicious
• It was agreed that the high quality pepperoni and sausage was the tipping point for this pizza – the quality was apparent and everyone loved it
• Cooking at 350 is probably too low, next time I’ll try a bit higher the whole time
• Man this was delicious, everything I had hoped it would be, a true pizza gut bomb

So of course, after that pizza, we ate some Ad Hoc Fried Chicken. Awesome. The poulet rouge chickens are about $8-10 each at Whole Foods, and they are so worth it. Chickens aren’t supposed to be fifteen pounds. And as Keller mentions, a smaller chicken is better for fried chicken due to the better meat to crust ratio.

I started by making refried beans. I had some Rancho Gordo black beans soaking in a water/garlic/bay leaf mixture from the previous day. Shown beside it are the Napa-based Rancho Gordo Rosa de Castilla beans, part of a joint venture called the Rancho Gordo-Xoxoc project, a partnership with Mexican bean growers to promote and ensure the survival of heirloom Mexican bean varietals. 

You can get a lot of great bean cooking ideas from the RG blog. The next day I ended up sautéing the rosa de castilla beans in bacon fat with onions. These beans are fantastic. You can buy RG beans online for $5-6 a package, or you can also pick them up at Star Provisions for $8.50 a package. $5 a package is expensive, but you get a lot of varietals that you won’t find around Atlanta, and the taste is 300% better than store brand beans.

I also ordered some Mexican oregano from RG, which has a slightly stronger and more distinct oregano flavor.

The beans weren’t quite tender yet, so I sautéed some onions and garlic, then added the beans, water, fresh ground cumin, chile powder and cayenne until they were soft and the liquid was almost totally reduced. Actually, these black beans never really got as tender as I wanted. And I cooked them a long time, probably an hour, adding water a few times.

I don’t have a masher, so I used my “mallet”, which also has the potential to be the most dangerous weapon in my kitchen. I mashed up the bean mixture, added some olive oil, and turned up the heat to finish the beans.

While all of this was going on, I also cooked some bacon and crisped potato cubes. I began creating the burritos – tortillas, then refried beans, then queso, potato, and bacon.

Followed by rice and scrambled egg. When I cooked the scrambled egg, I cooked it like an omelet, keeping it in one large piece. My thinking is that there would be less surface area of egg exposed to the deep freeze, so there’s less chance of textural issues when they are reheated.

I ended up making five burritos.

I ate one right away.

And froze the other four. I wrapped them tightly in aluminum foil. I should have wrapped them first in plastic wrap, then in aluminum foil, as the aluminum foil stuck to parts of the burritos when I tried to unwrap them later.

Here is a frozen burrito. The frozen bean end looks gross. I cooked it in the microwave for three minutes at 70% power. Don’t ask me why I selected 70%. I’m slightly neurotic about choosing microwave power levels. I come up with all sorts of internal justifications regarding why I chose a particular setting. “I’m warming up a pint of chili? Well Jimmy, we don’t want to cook the exterior of the chili, we want to slowly warm the chili, followed by a quick nuke to ensure the chili surface is hot enough to melt shredded cheese. Let’s go four minutes at 40%, followed by sixty seconds at 100%”.

Guess what, they were pretty good. I ate one almost every day for the following six days, and I never noticed a degradation of quality from day one to day six. The eggs didn’t even taste weird. I wish I had used more cheese, which I think helps balance out the rice and beans, which get a bit dry upon reheat. But additional salsa helps with that too.

I drive to South Carolina one morning every week, so these were especially convenient for that trip. Right before I jettisoned Atlanta, I microwaved the burrito, wrapped it in foil, and went on my way. It was still warm by the time I hit Monroe, GA.

Burrito success!