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One Block West sensational seasonal cuisine
25 South Indian Alley Winchester VA, 22601 540-662-1455
Newsletter for March 2004 Your source for what’s cooking at OBW |
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Triumph at ‘A Chocolate Affair’ Australian Wine Dinner, March 9th |
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From Fat Tuesday, February 24th through the 28th, we featured our creative Mardi Gras menu. The biggest hits on the menu were Smothered Pork Shanks, Crawfish Pie, and Catfish Bayou Lafourche, catfish seasoned with Ed’s own “Magic Dust” spice mix, then panéed (pan-fried), and topped with pecan butter and a crab salad (jumbo lump, celery root, pecans, dill, and crème fraîche).
We are planning other specials throughout the year. Next up is tapas. We will send you a note about each of these events.
Triumph at ‘A Chocolate Affair’
On Sunday February 8th, we brought some of our chocolate desserts to “A Chocolate Affair” at The Daily Grind, Creekside to help raise funds for Shenandoah Summer Music Theatre. We were happy to see some of you there and to visit with our friends from River’d Inn, 1763, Village Square, and Sodhexo (caterer for Shenandoah University). We had a great time, but it was a lot like work serving samples as fast as we could for two solid hours!
Although we did not know it at the time, each guest received a ballot to vote for his or her favorite dessert. Happily, we have the People’s Choice plaque displayed on our front counter and look forward to defending our title next year!
We brought our Chocolate Bread Pudding (unlike any bread pudding you have ever had before), our Bailey’s Irish Cream Cake (grated chocolate, cream, and Bailey’s), and dark chocolate cups filled with raspberry white chocolate mousse and Frangelico white chocolate mousse.
Congratulations to our pastry chef, Brenda Long!
If you haven’t tasted these desserts yet, what are you waiting for???
On Tuesday, March the 9th, One Block West will showcase the dynamite Corayo wines of Geelong, South Victoria, Australia, in a four-course tasting dinner at 7pm. These wines are so good that on tasting pre-arrival samples, we decided that they would marry outstandingly with our cuisine. If you are interested in wine, this is an outstanding opportunity to taste excellent wines and to learn from Fran Kysela, Master Sommelier and owner of wine importer/distributor Kysela Père et Fils.
As a Southerner by birth, Chef Ed knows a little something about grits, having cooked them all of his life, and he has found some special grits. One Block West has now teamed up with the country’s preeminent corn mill, Anson Mills of Columbia, SC, to bring you certified organic, old-fashioned, highly flavored grits. We will be featuring these grits with their bright corn taste on our forthcoming menus. Although we are sorry to be replacing a fine Virginia product, grits from Byrd Mills in Ashland, we are excited about the tremendous flavor of the Anson Mills grits.
Calvados is a stunning apple brandy from Normandy (and sometimes from Brittany) in France. Cider is made just as we do here locally and then it is left to ferment. Once it has fermented out, the cider is often aged for up to a year. Then it is distilled twice, leaving a clear brandy. This brandy is then aged in oak barrels for varying lengths of time, first in new oak and then in old oak. After aging, like Cognac, Calvados is blended to achieve a house style.
Calvados differs from typical American applejack in that the French tend to use much better cider apples and age the brandy in oak longer than we do, yielding a supple, aromatic spirit that smells at once of apples, vanilla, and spice.
Calvados is best drunk neat just as you would a fine Cognac or Armagnac. One Block West features Calvados Busnel Vieille Réserve (old reserve), one of the two brands available from Virginia ABC.
The Mardi Gras menus have introduced some items with which you may not be familiar. In the pasta jambalaya, I used andouille sausage and tasso.
Andouille Sausage. Louisiana-style, andouille is a one and one half-inch diameter smoked sausage of very coarsely ground or chopped pork (usually shoulder, aka butt), very little fat, garlic, cayenne, and other seasonings. It is an outstanding sausage with a little kick to it, but nothing like its French ancestor of the same name, which is a sausage of spiced pork intestines (chitterlings). At One Block West, we use Ray Comeaux’s andouille. If you need to substitute for andouille, use a high-quality smoked sausage, such as a kielbasa and increase the cayenne in the dish a bit.
Tasso. Another product from Louisiana, tasso is smoked, spice-rubbed (and you know that cayenne is a key spice in the rub) pork butt. With a look similar to ham, but with a coarser texture (butt vs. ham), tasso is unique and is used as a flavoring agent in the same way that country ham, bacon, and side meat are used. We also use Comeaux’s tasso. If you need to substitute, try a high-quality smoked ham product such as Hormel’s Cure 81, combined with a bit of country ham, and of course, add cayenne.
If cooking from Louisiana interests you, Paul Prudhomme’s Louisiana Kitchen is probably still the go-to guide, but at twenty years old, it’s a bit tired. Also, you may like The Gumbo Pages.
Chef Ed to Demo at Terra Cotta Kitchen
Chef Ed will be demonstrating tips for “Apple Blossom Entertaining” at Terra Cotta Kitchen in Creekside on Monday April 26th (Apple Blossom Monday) from 6-8 pm. For details or to register, contact TCK at 540-723-8800.
We continue to improve our wine list every week, aiming to have the finest wine list of any bistro in the region. Our list is built around value wines—wines that taste more expensive than they are. Underscoring our commitment to helping you explore the world of wine, we now have 58 wines by the glass. (View the wine list…) New and interesting this month:
Di Lenardo Pinot Grigio 2002 (great combo of fruit and minerals) Domaine Diochon Beaujolais Moulin-à-Vent Vieilles Vignes 2001 (deep, concentrated Gamay) Castello di Poppiano Sangiovese “Toscoforte” 2001 (Super Tuscan!) Castello di Poppiano Syrah 2001 (smooth, in the Northern Rhône style) Vietti Barbera d’Alba 2002 (outstanding!) Vietti Dolcetto d’Alba 2001 (amazing depth and concentration) Vignabaldo Sagrantino di Montefalco 1999 (blockbuster steak wine) Willowcroft (Virginia) Cabernet Sauvignon 2001 (well crafted VA cab)
Here’s a recipe for a salad that has stayed on our menu since its introduction during Greek Week back in January, because of customer demand. Another case of a dish being more than the sum of its parts, this idea may have originated as a riff on a Greek dessert of oranges with pistachios and honey.
Orange Salad with Pine Nuts and Honey
1 seedless orange per serving salt and freshly ground black pepper honey extra virgin olive oil pine nuts, toasted feta cheese, crumbled
With a sharp knife, peel the orange of all rind and pith. Slice the orange across into disks. Arrange the orange slices on a plate, sprinkle with salt and pepper, pour on equal quantities of honey and extra virgin olive oil (maybe a couple teaspoons per serving), sprinkle with pine nuts and then crumbled feta cheese.
Tip: To quickly peel an orange, use a very sharp knife to slice the top and bottom off. Using one of the cut ends as a stable base, cut the peel off from top to bottom, following the contour of the orange. It will take 6-8 cuts to peel the orange entirely.
Notes: At the restaurant, we plate this salad on a bed of baby greens dressed with our balsamic vinaigrette. This salad, in its simplicity, speaks volumes about high quality ingredients. You must have the best oranges, salt, pepper, honey, oil, nuts, and cheese to bring this off as we do at the restaurant. Pine nuts and excellent Tuscan olive oil are available at Costco. I do not recommend their feta cheese.
As the volume of our wine sales has grown, we have been able to cut our prices, especially at the higher end of our list. Many wines at the upper end of the list are 10-15% less expensive than formerly and our average bottle price has dropped 3-4 dollars, and a lot of our by-the-glass prices have dropped correspondingly. We hope that this encourages you to try some new wines. After all, it would be a shame to come to the premier wine restaurant in the area and not make a new wine discovery!
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Copyright © 2004 Shenandoah Food and Beverage Holdings, LLC |
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