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Newsletter for September 2004 Your source for what’s cooking at OBW
25 South Indian Alley Winchester VA, 22601 540-662-1455 |
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Please feel free to forward this newsletter to your friends.
Privacy Policy. We never disclose your email address to any outside party and we send the newsletter in such a way that others cannot see your email address (nor can you see theirs). |
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Since the August newsletter went out, we have added nearly 100 new subscribers. Welcome to the One Block West community—those of us who care about good food, good wine, and celebrating life through a good meal with good friends.
This newsletter is an extension of our web site, www.oneblockwest.com. If you haven’t yet visited the site, I encourage you to do so. In particular, the site contains feature articles, old newsletters, driving directions for your guests, and an events calendar.
August was a terrific month for us and we got to shut down for a week to refresh our batteries. I got time to think through hundreds of new ideas for the forthcoming fall menus. I look forward to cooking for you during the month of September. Good eating!
Ed Matthews, Chef/Owner
Life should be just a little more rewarding! Thanks to our good customers like you, we have made it through almost two years and are starting to thrive. We’d like to give you something in return for your loyalty. We are pleased to announce that after several months of diligent work, our One Block West Rewards program is in full swing. This program rewards our loyal customers—you—with a free $50 gift certificate after just a few visits to One Block West. Joining is easy: simply ask your server the next time that you are in the restaurant. (More details…)
Change of policy: because of the tremendous amount of day-of-the-event cancellations for the Chrysalis event in August, we are now requiring a credit card to book a reservation for our wine dinners.
August: Chrysalis Vineyards
In August, we featured the wines of Chrysalis Vineyards from just east of Middleburg. Owner and Norton evangelist Jenni McCloud showed off her Mariposa rosé, Viognier, Chardonnay, Norton, and Petit Manseng and I designed a 5-course menu around these wines.
September: Rappahannock Cellars
On September 22nd at 6:45pm, we’ll be featuring the wines of Rappahannock Cellars from just south of Front Royal. I will be building a 5-course menu around Rappahannock ’s Seyval Blanc, Viognier, Cab Franc, Meritage, and Late Harvest Vidal. The cost is $75 per person, which includes food, wine, tax, and gratuity. Seating is limited to 24 people by reservation and advance purchase by credit card.
October: Too Many Good Things!
We’re working on three projects for October: a beer dinner in conjunction with Old Dominion Brewing Company and Murphy Beverage, as a fundraiser for the Wayside Theatre; an Oktoberfest week; and a wine dinner tribute to Julia Child featuring wines from France and Santa Barbara in conjunction with Jason Bise of Country Vintner. Details to follow in next month’s newsletter or in special mailings.
I don’t have a lot of time to surf the web, but here are some sites that I find useful in my job:
This month, chorizo. Chorizo is simply the Spanish word for sausage. There are probably as many kinds of chorizos as there are sausage makers in the world and there are hundreds of variations all over the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking world. Here is a rundown on the two very different styles that are commonplace in the US.
Spanish chorizo. This is a small 9-10 oz hard pork sausage, flavored with garlic and pimentón. Many people think that these sausages are smoked and indeed they do have a smoky flavor, but this comes from the traditional paprika (pimentón) used to season them. The peppers are dried over smoky fires. The sausages themselves are air-dried. Palacios is an excellent Spanish sausage maker.
Mexican/Tejas chorizo. When I lived in Texas, huevos con chorizo was the breakfast to have—loose Mexican sausage scrambled with eggs and stuffed into hot flour tortillas. Mexican chorizo is invariably a fresh sausage, available loose or in casings (4oz links in my experience), and is very different in flavor from the earthy and smoky Spanish chorizo. Mexican chorizo is flavored with vinegar, ground chiles, garlic, oregano, and a dash of comino (cumin). It has a tangy, bright flavor from the vinegar and chiles. I still love to make a batch for a Sunday brunch.
Here’s a recipe idea for a great starter salad. It depends entirely on the quality of the ingredients. Buy the best tomatoes, basil, olive oil, black pepper, fleur du sel, and feta cheese that you can.
Heirloom Tomato Salad
Tomatoes Extra virgin olive oil Basil, finely sliced “en chiffonade” Black pepper Salt (preferably fleur du sel) Feta cheese, preferably sheep or goat’s milk
Slice the tomatoes into thick slabs. Whether you peel your tomatoes or not is up to you. Some of our heirlooms are so thin-skinned that it is not feasible to peel them. Arrange on a plate. Drizzle olive oil over and sprinkle with basil, freshly ground pepper and salt. Crumble feta over and serve immediately.
As many of you know, I am a longtime supporter of our local public TV stations, especially WVPT in Harrisonburg. I recently had the great pleasure to go to the studio and cook with Tassie Pippert, everyone’s favorite Director of Development, for the forthcoming WVPT Cooks: Fish and Game show which will air Saturday, September the 11th at 12:30pm and again on Saturday the 18th at 9:00am. I finally got to meet GM Bert Schmidt after all these years. You should have seen the faces Bert was making off camera—he’s a city boy and the idea of eating game is challenging for him, but he was a great sport about it all! I know that many of you support the idea of local produce and local farmers and I hope that you will consider supporting local TV as well.
Each week I get emails asking me about various cooking techniques and/or using ingredients. Every month in the newsletter, I will publish one or two interesting topics. Feel free to send email if there is some technique or ingredient that you need help with.
A customer asked me to buy a side of rockfish for her recently and I obliged. When she came to pick it up, she saw that it still had the skin on (as it always does) and she was unprepared to deal with it. She asked me how to skin the fish. Start by placing the fish skin down on a large cutting board, tail end toward you. Using a sharp slicing knife (not a chef’s knife), start by separating a bit of the tail skin from the flesh. With a towel, hold the exposed flap of skin as a handle. Angle your knife blade down towards the skin at about a 20-degree angle. Pull the skin towards you while moving the knife in a gentle sawing motion. With a little practice, the skin should separate cleanly from the flesh. The trick is to pull the fish into the knife, not to cut into the fish.
With an unusually cool August behind us, my mind is already wandering to fall dishes and dreaming of apples, mushrooms, hard/winter squashes, turnips, kale, collards, venison, bison, ossobuco and other braised dishes, game birds, comfort food, grits, filled pastas, gnocchi, oysters, Scotch, big red wines, and a glorious bowl of steaming soup. Even so, I plan to fully enjoy the peak of fresh tomato season now and for the next few weeks. Eat well on the produce from our local farmers for the next month—you’re going to miss all those glorious vegetables in a few weeks. I love the changing seasons here in Virginia—each one renews my energy and anticipation for the next. Come let me cook for you when you can.
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Copyright © 2004 Shenandoah Food and Beverage Holdings, LLC |
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