Spice it up!

I don’t like to toot my own horn.  Luckily, I did not come up with the Spicy Mayo that we use and sell at feast!, so I can go ahead and say without reservation that it is awesome.  Hernan Franco, one of the cooks at feast! and the head chef at Beer Run (the man works A LOT) created the recipe before my arrival at feast!.  Someone recently asked me what I would miss the most if I could never get anything from feast! again, and Spicy Mayo was on my short list.

First and foremost, it is delicious on all sandwiches.  Here, we use it in the Roast Beef Melt that we sell in the café, and it is not a coincidence that this is one of my favorite sandwiches.  Among the staff, it is not uncommon for us to replace the mayo/mustard that we use on our other sandwiches with spicy mayo.

The uses of spicy mayo are not limited to sandwiches, however.  We’ve made coleslaw and potato salad using spicy mayo, and both were fantastic.  Over Christmas one of our regulars bought some to put on top of crab cakes, which I thought was rather inspired.  I will also confess that I have been known to dip the ends of baguettes into the spicy mayo and eat them straight up.  Is it gross to eat huge scoops of mayo off of a small piece of bread?  Perhaps.  But, don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.

Next time you order a sandwich from the café, consider requesting spicy mayo instead of our regular mayo/mustard.  It’s delicious on the Tuna Melt, the Chicken Melt and the Chicken Cheddar Fig (sweet and spicy goodness!).   And don’t forget to bring it home and scoop it up on small pieces of bread away from prying eyes.  I won’t tell anyone.

Old Man Winter Eats Fondue and Cassoulet with Friends (and so should you)

I’m a winter kinda guy, always have been.  I appreciate the cold weather immensely and look forward to making hearty comfort food as the mercury drops.  Soups, stews, casseroles, braises – you get the picture. This is my culinary wheelhouse so to speak.

Comfort food, in my humble opinion, is best produced in large batches to encourage sharing with friends, family, random drifters, shut-in neighbors, roommates in your hostel etc. Don’t be shy!  Make a big pot and get to know fellow citizens of the earth.

Like the classic nursery rhyme- "Do not eat cassoulet, made by a French cat wearing a black beret"*

Cassoulet and cheese fondue are two delicious dishes that are particularly well suited to bringing together large swaths of humanity.  Feast adapted recipes for cassoulet and cheese fondue that provide a fantastic starting point, but experimentation is definitely encouraged.  Contrary to the residents of Southwestern France, we can make good cassoulet right here in the U-S of A.

Give it a shot.  Let us know how it goes…or better yet invite us over to check out the results.  I promise we’ll bring wine and be on our best behavior in front of your folks.

Click through to the next page for full cassoulet and cheese fondue recipes. 

“on the twelfth day of Christmas…”

Holiday traditions?

Singing and eating have always been foremost for me. Growing up, not getting to open our presents until we’d finished breakfast and stood lined up in kitchen, oldest to youngest, (youngest to oldest in alternating years) to stampede the living room, pounce the stockings and cannibalize our milk chocolate Santas. We spent evenings listening and singing along to our parents holiday albums on the phonograph record player. Perry Como was one, and comedian Allan Sherman who did a sendup of the Twelve days of Christmas, that to this day, has me belting out “…and a Japanese transistor ra-dee-oh!”

Preserved Lemon: Morocco and Beyond

Everyone has a favorite condiment.  You know, that condiment that seems to sneak its way into every meal that you prepare and eat.  For my grandfather, it is ketchup.  He will put it on steak (even if it is a very expensive new york strip in a fine dining restaurant), every form of potato dish (including soup), eggs, and pretty much everything else.  I know some people who swear by sriracha or relish.  For me, if I were stuck on a desert island with only one condiment, it would be the preserved lemon.

“Preserved lemon?!  What the heck is that?” you say.  Or maybe you say, “Oh sure, if I’m cooking a Morrocan dish I’ll use one of those babies.  But otherwise, they just sit in the shelf.”

Well, do I have some things to say to “you.”

First, what are they?  Preserved lemons are lemons that have been pickled.  Unlike most pickles, which are preserved in brine or in vinegar, lemons are preserved in their own juice with the addition of salt.  The lemons take about three months to fully pickle, but once pickled they last a long time.  I’m talking years.

wee wooden spoons

I have several personal collections, but the prominent one this time of year, is the perennial home and hearth implement, the wooden spoon. With me, it’s not the long cauldron or stew pot variety, but the diminutive and personal wooden spoon meant for jam and honey jars, chutneys and soft cheese and one’s own mouth. I collect wee wooden spoons.

It started with a tactile, comforting grasp at the fall Crozet Arts & Crafts Festival a few years back. Standing in the booth of an artisan woodworker, I spied a small spoon made of cherry, a mere five inches in length, light as a feather, smooth and familiar to the touch. It was lovely and became a favored objet d’art in our household such that our Jack Russell terrier claimed it, chomped it and permanently altered its functionality while rendering it with endearing charm.

I began to seek out small and rare wooden spoons online through eBay and Etsy, locally at artisans coops and gourmet kitchen retailers. I’ve amassed a collection of 67 spoons in oak, cherry, olive, bamboo, coconut, walnut, maple, pine and acacia from many countries on several continents in both hemispheres.

Farro: A Fall Treat

Fall is upon us in all of its glory.  All the signs are there.  There are leaves in my yard that I will no doubt ignore for months.  The mosquitoes have stopped their relentless assault.  And, I’ve had a fire in the good ol’ stove.  And with the change in weather, comes a change in appetite.

Working in the café, it is somewhat magical to watch the seasonal shifts in eating habits.  The quantify of soup we sell sky rockets.  And, it’s not just soup that we humans begin to crave when it gets cooler.  All of a sudden, the hearty dishes like braised meat stews and lasagna start to sound delicious, whereas in the heat of the summer even the thought of those heavier dishes gives me the sweats.  Sometimes these winter dishes can be less than forgiving on the waistline.  But after all, I need that extra layer of fat to keep me warm…right?

Serve hot, eat often.

Grits are good for you. I knew that long before I first ate shrimp and grits in Charleston, SC. While the “grits belt” runs from Texas to Virginia, I can only crow about the offerings of two states, both dear to me.

I’m lucky enough to have family living in the low country of coastal South Carolina. While visiting, I’ve learned to love the smell and vista of the salt marshes, large live oaks draped in Spanish moss, shrimp boats lining the docks (think Bubba Gump without the chocolate) at Gay’s Seafood on highway 21, past Beaufort. Ok, I can do with out the fire ants and humidity, but the palmetto state has it going on when it comes to food. Pat Conroy, native son and Fripp Island neighbor to my in-laws, wrote a fantastic cookbook that brilliantly weaves his story telling and culinary finesse. He describes grits “as an empty canvas for all kinds of experimentation” and of course, details his own Shrimp and Grits recipe, recommending the stone ground grits of Anson Mills. Have not tried them yet, but they offer blue corn grits from the Cherokee Nation, “…made from fresh new crop blue corn that have the fragrance and taste of mountain terroir and sweet corn, with intriguing background notes of chestnuts.” Mmm, what a beautiful image and provenance.

What the heck is a sunchoke?

One of the greatest parts of my job as Feast’s produce manager is procuring a variety of unique seasonal fruits and vegetables.  One of our newest offerings are delicious sunchokes, aka, Jerusalem artichokes, from one of our favorite local growers, Harvest Thyme, located in Staunton, VA (who also happen to be some of the nicest people I’ve ever met!).

If you haven’t seen one before, sunchokes are somewhat curious, knobby looking fellas… almost like ginger roots. And their name is misleading as they are not from Jerusalem, nor are they artichokes. One theory behind the name is that the word “Jerusalem” comes from the corruption of the original name “girasola”, which in Italian means “turning towards the sun”, which refers to its relative: the sunflower.  Native to North America, sunchokes were introduced to Europe by the French explorer Samuel de Champlaine after coming across them in Cape Cod in 1605.  They seemed have remained more popular across the pond but are making a culinary comeback here.

Automotive Challenges at the Heritage Harvest Festival

This past weekend we partook in the Heritage Harvest Festival at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello.  The festival is a celebration of gardening, sustainability, local food and the preservation of heritage plants – all things that we wholeheartedly advocate for on a daily basis. As you might imagine we were thrilled to be there, especially since this was the second outing for our recently acquired 1974 Citroen cheese truck.

To make a very long story short, we encountered automotive challenges during our morning ascent to Monticello.  Suffice it to say, we left an ample trail of transmission fluid and a massive cloud of white smoke in our wake (which may still be hanging over central Virginia).  The mechanical fracas managed to cause a fair share of chaos among festival organizers and other vendors (most of which were mired in the traffic jam our stalled out vehicle created).