One Block West Newsletter -- October 2008

Fall sure seems to have set in early this year. By September 15^th, I started rolling the game dishes back onto the menu and they and the wild mushroom dishes have been selling like hotcakes. I don’t usually start back with the game until mid-October.

Going with the game theme, this month’s newsletter leads off with a photo essay on preparing wild boar racks. And, after many years of thinking about how I pair food and wine, I have finally put some ideas to pen, which I share with you. Also, learn about a fabulous Ecuadoran potato pancake below and read about the wonderful food at my recent mystery basket dinner to learn how you can get invited to the next one. I’ve finally found an Internet source for gourmet ingredients such as wild boar for all you home chefs. Finally, I take a look at how cross contamination can make you ill and what you can do to avoid it.

I know that a lot of you look forward to this newsletter every month so that you can keep up with the restaurant. For those of you who want to keep up on a more frequent basis, I blog on One Blog West several times a week. The blog is a great place to see what kind of food topics are on my mind and it’s also a great forum for asking me questions. I’ve recently spent a lot of time working on the indexing so that you can find what you’re looking for more quickly. And one of the very nice things about the blog is that I can post photos of things so that we can all see what I am talking about.

Thanks for reading this newsletter; I had fun putting it together,

Ed Matthews, Chef/Owner

Events Calendar back to top

Sunday

October 12, 2008

Public Demonstration

I will be doing my 5^th annual Cooking with Herbs demonstration in the courtyard at Blandy Farm during this year’s Arborfest, Sunday October 12^th, at 3pm. This started off with a dozen people and has grown to over a hundred attendees last year. Come early and stake out a seat; otherwise, it’s SRO.

Sunday

November 22, 2008

Mystery Basket Dinner

Come into the restaurant between now and November 15^th to enter the drawing for my next mystery basket dinner. Details below.

Wild Boar Recipe Contest

More and more over the past year, I have been working with companies to develop recipes to showcase various ingredients, with pretty fair success. At least the companies and those of you who have tasted the results have been happy with my work. Over the years, I’ve seen a bunch of recipe contests announced in the chef trade rags, but hadn’t paid much attention to them until August.

Just before our annual holiday, one of my distributors announced a contest with a $500 prize to the chef with the best wild boar recipe. While I was on holiday, I decided to apply my recipe development skills to a boar recipe, and what the heck, enter the contest.

I have just learned that my recipe for Roulade of Wild Boar Rack, which many of you will have tasted over the past couple of weeks, won the contest. More….

Mystery Basket Dinner

During the month of August and in early September, customers could enter a drawing each time they dined with us to attend a mystery basket dinner at my house on September 21^st. The concept behind a mystery basket dinner is simple: I supply lots of wine and basic proteins, while each couple attending the dinner brings three ingredients and then we all make dinner using all the ingredients, plus whatever else we want from my fridge and pantry.

I used to do this frequently, but got out of the habit because the restaurant is so all consuming. But we had such a good time on the 21^st that I am going try to schedule these dinners more frequently. Come dine with us at the restaurant and enter the drawing for the next dinner on November 22nd.

Congratulations to Bill Smith of Boyce who was the recent winner. More….

Marx Foods

Over and over in the past, you’ve asked me where you can buy things like duck, chanterelles, and wild boar and I’ve had to tell you that I don’t know. Finally, I am able to tell you that not only can you get what you need at Marx Foods, but that I can recommend them as a great company to work with. This is the retail arm of the same distributor that I use and I have nothing but glowing things to say about them. Place your order right on the web at www.marxfoods.com and FedEx will deliver it right to your door.

Recipe: Harissa

From time to time, I donate private cooking lessons and dinner to various organizations to auction for a fundraiser. This weekend, I did dinner for eight and the high bidders wanted me to demonstrate dishes with lamb ("but not chops"). For some reason, I was in the mood for North African food or other Arab-inflected food, so I cooked up a tagine, a couscous, a couple of other dishes, and a big batch of harissa. More….

How To: Cut up a Pineapple

I'm not sure why it's happening now, but a lot of people are asking me how to prep a pineapple. Surely there are dozens of ways to do it; here's one that works for me. Just for grins, I timed myself once at this. It took 56 seconds from whole pineapple to fully cut up pineapple, so you know that it is an easy method. More…

Something to Wine About: Wine and Food Pairings

Ever since I got in the restaurant business, I have been trying very hard to distill how I pair wine and food into a few simple rules that I could use in training the service staff. The problem is that there isn’t really a conscious thought process. You say grilled shrimp salad and I say Albariño. You say grilled eggplant and I say Virginia Cabernet Franc.

Recently, I have made some headway and the staff has found the information useful, so I thought that I would share it with you. I have decided that I lump foods into general flavor categories that I pair to specific wine categories, then I use nuances to further select a wine from a category to pair with a specific food preparation.

Wine Category to Food Pairings

Sweet white, rosé, fruity white: Spicy foods such as curry, mole, sweet and sour; salads, cold dishes

Fruity white: many cheeses, poultry, salads

Crisp white: Light seafood: white fish, shellfish

Light red: Heavy/dark seafood, tuna, salmon, oily fish (herring, mackerel, bluefish), seafood in tomato sauce, pasta, wild mushrooms, grilled foods

Fruity red: Sweet meats such as pork, boar, duck; Cured meats: ham, smoked meats, sausages

Big red: Heavy/gamy meats such as beef, lamb, elk, venison

Wine Categories

Sweet white: Riesling

Fruity white: Pinot Blanc, Viognier, Picpoul, some Chard, rosés, some sparkling (Wolfberger rosé)

Crisp white: Sauvignon Blanc, Vouvray sec, Pinot Grigio/Gris, some Chard, sparkling wines, Albariño, Gavi, Seyval

Light-bodied red: Pinot Noir, some Cab Franc, most Tempranillo, Nebbiolo, Sangiovese

Fruity red: some Cab Franc, Shiraz/most Syrah, some Cabs, some Merlots, some Garnacha, Chambourcin, Zinfandel

Big red: Petit Verdot, Norton, most Bordeaux blends, some Cabs, some Merlots, Châteauneuf du Pape, Hermitage, most Rhônes, Malbec

I’m trying to keep this at a very simplistic level. You must realize that there are many exceptions to these guidelines and that I haven’t mentioned oak at all. Oak, especially in whites, can really change things. And when I list a wine above, I’m thinking about its typical form. Pinot Noir is generally a light-bodied, fairly feminine wine, but in California, they do make giant fruit bombs from this grape.

Llapingachos

Until just over a year ago, I'd never heard of Llapingachos—Ecuadoran potato and cheese cakes—until I read an article about them in Gourmet. I've been looking for a reason to make them. More….

Cross Contamination

A couple days ago, I was sitting on the restaurant deck eating lunch with the art director of a magazine after a photoshoot—we couldn't let all that good food go to waste, now could we?—and during the course of our conversation, he asked, "How antagonistic is your relationship with the Health Department?" More….

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