beautiful radishes from Love is Love Farms

Among the many hit hard by the recent ATL flood are Joe Reynolds and Judith Winfrey of Love is Love Farms. Wonderful farmers, you could find their produce at The Local Farmstand in the Westside Provisions District, as well as the Peachtree Road Farmer’s Market every Saturday.

Farming, marketing, and selling local produce is a challenge unto itself, and their contribution to the local and slow food scene is immense. It really bums me out to see the photos of their farm and read about the extent of the damage in the New York Times. I love buying from them as often as I can – everyone I’ve met associated with Love is Love is super friendly to me, and their food is awesome. I’d hate to seem them become a casualty to this disaster.

It appears I’m not the only one – plans are already being put in place to help raise money for their cause. Early word is that Woodfire Grill (and current Top Chef contestant Kevin Gillespie) will host a fundraising dinner for Love is Love on October 11th at 6PM. $100, 4 courses with wine pairings, with all proceeds going to Love is Love.

This is a wonderful cause, at maybe my favorite restaurant in town. See you there.

The ghetto burger at Ann’s Snack Bar – Worth the wait; we were seated at 11:30 and the last burger of the first seating was delivered at 12:30PM. I would suggest bringing something to snack on while you wait, but snacking before eating a Ann’s burger could be a costly mistake.

Local Beer from ABC – I enjoyed this #’s Ale, and it’s probably my favorite of theirs right now, particularly in the summer. This pint was consumed at Max’s Coal Oven Pizzeria. In addition, Atlanta Brewing Company has tours each Thursday and Friday evening. It’s usually less crowded than Sweetwater, and it’s within stumbling distance of my house, which works out nicely.

The appetizers at RA Sushi – Last week I visited RA Sushi and started off with the scallop dynamite and pork gyoza. The tiny scallops in “dynamite” (spicy mayo) sauce were enjoyable, albeit something I’ve never seen at a sushi restaurant. The dumplings were soft and sticky on top, and well crisped on the bottom. The traditional ponzu sauce had small red pepper flakes that added a great kick. RA may not satisfy the educated students of sushi, but it’s a great place in midtown to pop in for some cold or hot sake and a few bites. Cliff Bostick with Creative Loafing actually mentions these two appetizers in his recent post.

The scallop po’ boy at Star Provisions – This specialty sandwich makes an appearance fairly frequently at SP, and when it does, don’t you dare scoff at the $12 price tag. It’s worth every penny. These plentiful, deep fried, and fabulously seasoned scallops go amazingly with the well designed balance of bibb lettuce, spicy remeloude, pickles, and oh-my-thank-God it’s summer tomatoes, all served in soft bread that would make any New England lobster roll jealous.

The burrata at Star Provisions – Cheesemonger Tim Gaddis just received another shipment of this in last Friday, so hurry up and get over there within the next day.

The variety of beer at Hop City Craft Beer & Wine – The selection is fantastic and Kraig is a real hop-head who is always happy to steer you in the right direction. On my most recent visit (below) I picked up the Hitachino Red Rice Ale, the Sierra Nevada Southern Hemisphere Harvest, Stone Imperial Russian Stout, Maharaja Imperial India Ale, Baird Red Rose Amber Ale, Stone 13th Anniversary Ale, Hitachino Japanese Classic Ale, and the Stone IPA.

Summer in Atlanta – One of the many reasons I’m excited about summer is the freshness of produce. My basil and my first round of tomatoes are coming in strong, giving me all sorts of reasons to whip up some fresh and tasty plates at any time. If you don’t have a garden (or even if you do), go check out one of the many farmer’s markets each Saturday in Atlanta, or The Local Farmstand each Tuesday through Saturday.

Luckily, I have a few posts queued up for this week so you won’t get withdrawals, or what I call the “Sichuan shakes”.

Today’s post is a dish that I was quite excited about – Dry-Fried Chicken. I’ve already taken on Dry-Fried Green Beans, but texturally it wasn’t exactly what I was expecting and I was more looking forward to dry-frying meats and seeing how that turned out.

To refresh your memory, dry-frying (gan bian) is a distinctively Sichuan cooking method, where food is generally cut into small or thin slivers, then stirred constantly in a wok with just a small amount of oil, until it’s slightly dried out or “fried”.

A vegetable, such as celery, leeks, or bell peppers is added near the end of the cooking, so they are slightly cooked, to add a wonderful crunchy contrast (and color) to the dish. Remember, textures are very important in Sichuan cooking.

I didn’t have celery on-hand, but I did purchase some Chinese cabbage from Love is Love Farms via The Local Farmstand. Yes, I mention these places all the time, and yes, I will continue to do so until it’s beaten into you – you should visit these people!

On to the pictures:

This recipe is fairly simple in appearance, though it does take some time. Of course, you need to get all your gear out and your food prepared before you start applying heat. I attempted to cut the stems of the cabbage into the “horse-ear” shape, which is where you cut the vegetable at an extreme angle. Only a few of them turned out as planned.

Don’t worry, I didn’t throw the cabbage leaves away, they were stored for later use.

Again, get your ingredients right next to your wok/heat source.

The cookbook instructs us to cut the chicken into one inch chunks. I wasn’t exactly sure if that meant cubes, so I attempted to cut them into strips of moderate thickness. The size/shape of cuts of meat are important in Sichuan, so maybe I need to try this again, following the guidelines more closely.

The chicken cooks for 4-5 minutes by itself to release moisture, then the chiles and the Sichuan pepper is added.

Here comes the fun part – now we turn down the heat, add red chili bean paste, splash in the Shaoxing rice wine and soy sauce, and dry-fry for 10-15 minutes. That seemed excessively long to me, but we have our orders…

In that 15 minutes, a few things happened. First, the bottom of my wok became covered by a thin layer of a dense, sticky, paste-like mixture of oil and chili bean paste that somewhat burned. Also, the Sichuan peppercorns appeared to pretty much totally char, which is not appealing. Even though the heat is medium, cooking those tiny peppercorns for 15 minutes, I don’t understand how any other outcome is possible. Finally, the chicken turned leathery in appearance, looking more like chicken jerky than what I was expecting.

After my 15 minutes was up, I added the vegetables for 1-2 minutes, removed it from the heat, then seasoned with salt and sesame oil and served.

With some consternation I sat down to eat. It definitely wasn’t what I was expecting in appearance, however, it did look decent. The taste? The crunch and color of the cabbage and the scallions was enjoyable, but the chicken, while tactilely interesting, was indeed somewhat leathery and tough on the outside. The flavor/depth from the red chili paste, with slight sweetness and more than moderate heat was appealing, and the chicken below the tough exterior was still surprisingly succulent. I still don’t think I was on target though.

I tried to search for other photos of this recipe and all I could find is here.

I intend on playing with this recipe a bit more. I think I will add some of the Sichuan pepper and chili paste later in the process. I also have been told by a friend that cooking larger pieces of chicken will result in a much juicier and more enjoyable dish, and that in general these cooking times are often odd. It’s tough to gauge how close my results are to the intent when there aren’t many resources online, and with such few restaurants to which I can compare.

I slowly ate each bite, scratching my head, challenging the authenticity, then I realized…well, I just ate and enjoyed the whole damn thing.

The whole point of this series (for me) is to gain understanding of Sichuan cooking methods and ingredients, so that I can add them to my repertoire and into my regular cooking routine. Lately I’ll stir fry whatever vegetables I have on hand, maybe add some ground beef or pork, put together a quick sauce, follow the Sichuan method of sauce/flavor layering, then toss everything with some Chinese noodles, and the end results have been quite satisfying, and better yet, quick and easy.

However, this doesn’t mean I’m moving on from the cookbook. There’s plenty to learn and too many dishes that I can’t wait to eat, such as today’s post – Spicy Cold Noodles with Chicken Slivers.

Cold Asian noodles is a personal favorite of mine, and this recipe is quite similar to many recipes such as this one, but the sauce is distinctively Sichuanese. You can substitute many ingredients (rice vinegar instead of Chinkiang Chinese vinegar and peanut sauce or tahini for the sesame paste), but I would definitely recommend you seek out Chinese noodles, whose primary ingredient is wheat flour. Fuchsia calls for fresh pasta in this recipe, but the dried pasta will work just fine. Just remember that fresh noodles weigh much more when converting quantities for dry noodles.

First I took more of my butterflied chicken breast and sautéed it in a grill pan in a small amount of olive oil. Then I let it cool and gently shredded it with a fork. Fuchsia recommends smacking the cooked chicken with a rolling pin (a mallet or you bare fist will work too!) to loosen the chicken fibers, making it easier to shred. This little trick worked extremely well!

While the chicken was cooking I prepared my noodles, mixed in a small amount of oil, and set them out to cool as well. Unlike Italian food, Sichuan noodles are always cooked “well done” instead of to al dente.

The recipe called for blanched bean sprouts, but I discovered mine had gone bad. Those suckers don’t last as long as I wish they would. However, I just picked up some lovely radish from The Local Farmstand, and thought they would be a great replacement for the “crunch factor” of the bean sprouts and they always add fantastic complementing color.

Next up I whipped up the awesome sauce of light and dark soy sauce, black Chinese vinegar, sesame paste, sesame oil, sugar, garlic, ground/roasted Sichuan pepper, and chili oil.

I mixed up the noodles with the sauce, transferred to my serving bowl, then topped it with the shredded chicken, sliced radish, and scallions. Besides looking fairly fantastic, it happened to taste delicious. The sesame paste gave it a rich peanut-like flavor and the dish of course had the common Sichuan sweet/spicy/savory flavor combo going. Watch out for the large chunks of garlic. My breath was kickin’ later that day.

Regardless of the weather, this past weekend I had plans to stop by the Westside Provisions District Spring into Green Festival on Saturday, then head south to Serenbe for their May Day.

I was only at the Westside festival for an hour as I was also planting tomatoes that day, which turned out to be a total waste since it has done nothing but rain since that time. I do love any reason to pop in Star Provisions. This time I got a “piece” of frittata to eat, which they should really call a 1 kilo of frittata, because that’s a better approximation. This one was fresh out of the oven and chock full of mushrooms, potatoes, chevre, and asparagus.

I also stopped by the festival to support B.Right Scooters – 100+ MPG!!!

You must stop in The Local Farmstand if you are there – the selection is somewhat limited but they have some green’s mixes, radishes, and other dry goods that are worth a look.

My bounty from the festival – radish, Chinese cabbage, pork belly, and 1 pound of rendered duck fat. What do I do with rendered duck fat? Besides being great for my skin I’m told it will assist in creating an amazing char when cooking a steak. Confit may also be in my future…

Next up, Serenbe – the weather was a little nicer, at least we didn’t get any rain.

Nice to see H&F Bread Co here. I actually saw some people walking around, gnawing on large pieces of bread.

Steve Nygren was walking around with the pig below, named Hamlet.

There were a bunch of food options, including the shrimp and grits, which I did not eat…

… because we took a seat and ate at the Blue Eyed Daisy. Good sandwich/salads stuff, plus a good price on Sweetwater, who was also there pouring beers on draft. The pimiento cheese sandwich was the table favorite.

Baby goats and baby pigs, living together in harmony. Here they are all tuckered out from being poked and prodded by children (and Katie) all day.

It was a long day, but with a little urging we made it to Shaun’s for their Sunday night pasta deal – 3 courses for $12. The salad is served family style.

My main was Via Elisa ricotta ravioli with black kale pesto. A perfectly sized portion, fantastic pesto sauce, and of course Via Elisa is always the stuff. They also had a ziti with braised short rib main course. We also tried the chopped liver which I wouldn’t have guessed I would be a fan of, but turned out to be fantastic – sort of like a creamy chicken salad with much more depth of flavor.

A tiring, but fun weekend.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m quite the “list & series” type of person, which really fits my Type A (uptight?) personality. I keep lists for everything. You ought to see my car mileage, maintenance, and oil records.

Before I dig into this post (TWIST!), I thought it would be an appropriate time to pass along some quick pizza news:

• Varasano’s announced that for $12.95 you can try every pizza on the menu. All the pizzas. $12.95. No-brainer.
• There is an awesome video chronicling a day at Una Pizza Napoletana in NYC. They are one of the most heralded pizza places in the country, and though the video is short, it’s insightful and shows the love that goes into making great pizza.
• The Food Network did an experiment to try to find out for sure – does the water used in pizza matter? Some people claim the NYC water is the reason why the pizza is so good up there, but I’m of the opinion that it’s a load of baloney. In my post on Pizzeria Venti, I stated my opinion on this matter, and the Executive Chef of Pizzeria Venti commented on the post with some interesting thoughts on why water from a specific area can be important. Check out the FN video here to see the surprising results.
• The first coal pizza oven in Georgia is coming soon, to Max’s, a Concentrics Restaurant. In case you didn’t know, the first pizza joint in the country, Lombardi’s, uses a coal oven, so this is definitely not a new concept, but it’s slightly ground-breaking for our area. As Cliff said, the pizza wars are going to be in full effect.
• Finally – would you pay $100 for this? Bricks seem to do just fine.

Back to the post at hand!

I was stoked to see that the April issue of BA had a section on pizza parties, and they had a few topping/sauce suggestions that seemed worthwhile. Also, I just received a mixer for my birthday, so I’ve been eager to make some dough.

My dough recipe is a dumbed-down version of Jeff Varasano’s – I had a post about it last September. My pictures sucked pretty bad back then, and my dough kinda did too. One problem was that I was using a food processor with a dough blade, and I had to sit there for 5 minutes and pulse the dough/batter mix every few seconds. It’s a real pain in the ass and the dough doesn’t get worked properly. With the mixer, I create the really wet dough (seen below) and can just set the mixer on low for 7-8 minutes before it’s initial rest, followed by the addition of the remainder of the flour.

After the 7-8 minute mix, the dough rests for 20 minutes. Then I start the mixer back up and slowly add the rest of my flour over the course of 6-7 minutes. When it’s barely workable, but still very wet, the dough gets dumped out onto my well-floured counter and worked into two dough balls.

Here’s what it looked like right before I put it in the refrigerator.

Now compare that dough with the picture above, which is from the last time I made pizza. See how much smoother it is when I use the mixer? My new dough was dreamy.

My brother Thomas was helping out and got started with the Arugula-Pistachio Pesto from BA.

Meanwhile I roasted some Roma tomatoes with fresh oregano, salt, and pepper.

Here the pesto is done and looking mighty green.

The other sauce we made from BA was their Roasted-Tomato sauce.

With our sauces ready, we were off and running. I used too much pesto but hey, worse things have happened.

This pizza was topped with the pesto, olive oil, sliced/steamed potatoes, and mozzarella. The dough was thin, crispy, and it even held up pretty well considering the extreme amount of pesto.

Next up – roasted tomato sauce, fresh jalapenos, mozzarella, and smoked Boston butt from Patak.

Weil called this “gumbo pizza”, and I have to agree with him. The sautéed red sauce plus the smoky flavor of the Patak’s meat was definitely reminiscent of gumbo. It was interesting…not my favorite ever, but actually not too bad.

Finally, the next day I created my last pizza. The remainder of the pesto, mozzarella, sliced onions, scallions, and sliced radish from The Local Farmstand. Yay for freshness.

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I didn’t even think about the fact that the farmer’s market was there, though I had read it was starting back up this Saturday from 8:30 to noon. Luckily, I had some cash with me and after a long ride I was eager for some food.

The only photos I have are from when I returned home to make lunch with my newly acquired bounty. On the menu – Love is Love Farms kale mix, Pine St Market chipotle smoked bacon, and Sweetgrass Dairy cheese from the Via Elisa stand. I can’t recall the name of the cheese, but it is like a creamy feta – awesome stuff. I also picked up some of their Georgia Gouda.

I fried up the bacon then sautéed the kale in the bacon fat, along with a splash of my fragrant soy sauce and apple cider vinegar. Hit it with some salt and pepper, top off the vegetables with the cheese and the bacon, and this turned into one of the most fantastically fresh, local, and delicious dishes I’ve had in a while. Pictures here.

You can read more info on the farmer’s market at Atlanta Dish.

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Melissa Libby PR has updated their website and they have some great new content. For one, check out their Upcoming Events page where they’ve handily embedded a Google Calendar with tons of daily on-goings. This is a great page to bookmark to find fun stuff to do. Also noteworthy is the What’s New page.

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Foodie Buddha just posted about a brunch at Glover Farms on Sunday March 22. Visit his site for more info.

Many of the farmers that contribute to the Local Farmstand (among other places) will be there, and they’re good people. Supporting local producers is something we should all get behind, and this should be a lot of fun.

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The April issue of Bon Appetit is already out, and this month another Atlanta spot was featured, this time in the “Top 10 Sushi Spots”. The honor goes to MF Buckhead, the 2nd MF sushi restaurant in Atlanta.

I haven’t been to this location, but the omakase meal is on my wishlist in a major way. I just need to find someone else who is willing to spend $300 on a sushi dinner. Check out John Kessler’s “epic” omakase meal here. Braised lotus root stuffed with lobster mousse. Braised burdock root wrapped with anago. Real wagyu beef.

However, if you’re bold enough to say that the Moroccan street cart sitting-in-the-sun-all-day donkey dick that I watched Andrew Zimmern eat on TV the other day will enter our collective palate in 2009, and it comes true, then you my friend, are a trend setter and something of a culinary Nostradamus, I might add.

Despite my cynicism, I hope that you food fans out there try some new stuff in 2009. Go to a farmer’s market, pick an ingredient you’ve never cooked with yourself, do some research on the ingredient online, and make something delicious. If you make this a goal for each week of this year I guarantee you will be amazed at how much you have learned. 

the kitchn: how to stock your pantry in 2009: In summary: dry beans, fish for breakfast (ed: note – gross), squirrel (wtf?), and barrel aged beer. 

CitySearch – Gourmet Burgers: FLIP, Holeman & Finch, Rathbun Steak, Shaun’s, and Lamplighter. I am going to FLIP tonight but so far the H&F burger has stolen my heart. 

Gourmet – 2009 Food & Travel Predictions: Beans (again), ice cream > cupcakes, non-mixologistesque cocktails (classic cocktails with bitters – think Mad Men),  pre-amuse bouche (???? What would you call it – my vote is amuse langue), Korean & Indian food, and restaurant bargains!

San Francisco Gate: Food-Obsessed’s Wish List for 2009: Restaurant prices will fall, lower corkage fees, and they will offer more deals and events to intrigue eaters during these financially wary times. Also notable – duck fat and sustainable ingredients. 

the kitchn: food and cooking predictions for 2009: This site is all about some lists. In this one, they venture to say the economy will have the biggest impact on 2009. Oh, I hadn’t heard. They also say egg, pork, beans, comfort food, the local butcher, and potato chips will all be on the forefront. Meh. 

Rogue Apron – Your Local Food Resolutions: Judith from Love is Love Farms offers some sage advice for eating better in 2009. You may recall that they are one of the contributors to The Local Farmstand here on the Westside, which is where I pickup my milk for mozzarella. Some of Judith’s ideas: meet a farmer, grow something, and cook with friends. I vow to visit a local GA farm sometime in 2009. Will you?

Had a quick lunch with a friend yesterday over at Star Provisions, and now looking at the picture above I am already drooling again.

I’ve been to SP a bunch of times, but for some reason I’ve never ordered take-out or sandwiches. I’ve only picked up cheese, meats, and mushrooms, all of which have been fantastic. They have their own cured meats and the cheese monger (fun word to say) has some good stuff and will cut you off a piece to order. Link to their 235 page cheese PDF here. The meat selection will vary but they have some interesting stuff; once I saw Kobe hot dogs. I didn’t pick up any of those but I did get some great soppresata, salami, and other hard cured meats for a charcuterie plate and fancy pants grilled cheese and it ruled. More on their meats/seafood here. I forgot they have a good sized offering of oysters too; I need to remember to take advantage of that.

The entrance to SP is the same once you’d walk through to enter Bacchanalia. You can kind of see it in this dreary photo below. Between JCT, Figo, Taqueria del Sol, and the Bacchanalia/Quinones/SP medley, the parking lot is a BMW and Mercedes commercial.

Anyways, the sandwich menu is here, and that is what we were using to order. In addition to sandwiches, they have some pizzas and a Blue Plate with chicken and some good looking sides if you are hungry enough.

I went with the pastrami reuben and my friend got the shrimp po’ boy.

Pretty good looking, no?

Mine was fantastic, and Sam said his was worth the $10 too. The bread on mine was fresh, but crunchy and delicious and held up well to all the greasy pastrami and cheesy sauciness. The pastrami looked too fatty at first, but it was tender and wasn’t a bit chewy so I was able to eat it without pulling all the meat off with each bite. It had a lot of flavor/fatty goodness.  A small bag of chips would have been nice for them to throw in at that price but all I got was a decent pickle.

Also worth noting is that The Local Farmstand, to the left of the SP entrance is now open on Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s starting at 10AM. They bring in fresh fruits and veggies from two farms and they had some real good lucking greens when I went in there.

Lastly – come out to this area on Saturday, where they will be having the Westside Winter Festival. More info here.

Somewhat related – I also reviewed this on Yelp. I like using Yelp to find restaurants and wanted to contribute, but am not sure about taking the time to do this site and a full Yelp review. I plan on just doing a few lines of comments in Yelp, then linking to my full write-ups here. Is that uncouth? I don’t want the Yelp review to be a shameless plug for this site, but hey, I gotta real job and writing up two full posts takes some time.