Procrastinating

Eggs over easy, melon balls, toast, and bacon, not necessarily in that order.

It's not often I get to use the melon baller. I got the tool to easily remove seeds from apples and pears, so this kind of thing is just a bonus. Melon was on the brain after being treated to a wonderful melon/honey/olive oil cake dish at Bar Cento along with Maybelle's Parents. It reminded me of a super rich bread pudding, but was very different. The unexpected, but welcome, run-in with the Parents reminded me that there are advantages of being in smaller city, particularly this one. There are more than enough decent places to eat to stave off boredom, but the universe is small enough that there's always a good chance that you can wander into a place and find some good company and people that really enjoy good food.

The bacon is part of my quest to find the best bacon in the area. This stuff was from a processor in Fredericktown, OH. They use Ohio pigs. It was very good and toothsome, but a little pork steaky for my tastes. Maybe it was just the thick cut? For me, I've yet to have anything here or elsewhere that rivals the bacon from Country Gristmill (available at the Shaker Farmers Market, summer and winter). It's takes some attention during cooking, but I think the results are worth it. I'll admit though, that despite my love of smoking and things smoked I've yet to dabble with the ubiquitous trend of making bacon at home. It's bound to happen, but getting a happy pig's belly around here isn't as easy as it should be. It'll happen soon enough.

The eggs, as always, are from Plum Creek. Unless I get a few chicken of my own, there's no other choice for me. The butter for frying them and for the toast is raw milk butter from a cow-share I participate in.

A decent start for a day that should be filled with crating things for my imminent move. If you read this blog and are sick of hearing about it, I assure you I am sicker of mentioning it and am more than ready to move to my mini-orchard in the shadow of Franklin Avenue. Hopefully the next entry will be typed from there.

Pork Soup Lunch

Pork chunks wok cooked with cumin in a chicken stock broth with potatoes, carrots, onion, dried chiles, and summer savory. Soup on a hot day. I don't know why, but it works.

If you send it, I will eat it (and post about it), probably

Or, how I am happily pimping The CFT for 1 kilo of cheese (brie, specifically) while being all about disclosure and transparency. It started like this:

Hello,

While looking for blogs on food, wine and cheese I came across your website and found it very interesting. I’m contacting you on behalf of Ile de France, a French cheese importing company . . . .

First I was flattered, then intrigued, then thought it was a scam, and then intrigued again. So I followed up on the comment and, as promised, UPS showed up with my cheese. The box (nice and reusable):
The cheese:
And the catch:

. . . just remember that you need to mention the source and place a link to our website.

To get that out of the way, it's from Ile De France, and here's their website.

The first thing I did after getting the package was eat the majority of one of the wedges on crackers. Very good, especially once it warmed up to room temp.

I got to work on the rest of the wedge at dinner time. The pork is from Country Gristmill, local Amish farmers. It's good pork. I took a boneless chop (normally I go with bone in, but that's what I saw first at the Market), cut a slit in it, and jam packed it with a slivers of the brie and some basil leaves. After patting the stuffed pork dry with a paper towel, I seasoned it with salt and pepper and seared it in a little canola oil. The chop then went in a 450 oven until it was cooked med. rare/med. No need to brine the pork here, as masking the porkyness would be a shame. The rendered fat on the chop and the velvety melted cheese melded great, especially with the basil adding some freshness.

The potatoes are some local red potatoes, cooked and mashed with the skin and some fresh garlic (the garlic was boiled with the potatoes). As I was mashing them I added the remainder of the brie wedge, some cream, summer savory, butter, and salt and pepper. It worked very will with . . .

The broccoli, which was simply steamed with a little butter and salt and pepper on top. Combined with the potatoes it was like a a nice take on broccoli with cheese sauce. Even though I harvested the broccoli a day or two too late, it still beats the grocery store.

And the broken sauce was just some port cooked down in the pork pan with some butter added at the end. It may not be pretty, but it contributed. And with no stock on hand it was the best I could come up with.

So that's it. I must admit that I was ready to rip on the cheese. Honestly, I wanted to rip on the cheese, and had even thought about some choice words before receiving it. It's from a big producer that overflows the internet with videos and annoying product placements and chef endorsements. But it was very good. Not the most gooey, transcendent cheese I've ever had, and the packaging smacks of mass production, but still, very good. The bottom line for me is that if I'm at a grocery store and need a snack, I'd consider getting a wedge of this along with a baguette (Soon I hope to do a blind taste test with this and other grocery store double creams, along with one "artisan" variety, to see how things stack up--I'll post the results if I do it.). I'd even unabashedly put a wedge of the Ile De France on an after dinner cheese plate . . . at least until we start producing some brie style cheese around here.

And here's a gratuitous meat shot:

Quick summer squash (zucchini) pasta

Simple summer pasta for when there's an abundance of basil and squash. Not a bad problem to have (at least as far as the basil goes). This squash was from a start I picked up at the the Crown Point Ecology Center's plant sale. It's a Costata Romanesca Summer Squash, an Italian heirloom. The plants are big, the yield average, and the taste great. It also holds up well in cooking (I might try a curry with the next one). If you like summer squash, and don't want to be buried in them to the point where the neighbors run into the house when they see you headed their way with your bounty, this variety might be a good choice. Just get some seeds before the breeders ruin it.

Ingredients:
- Squash, cut into half moons
- Pasta (here from Ohio City Pasta)
- Bacon (I used some from a vendor at the Market who seems to specialize in lamb--very good lamb. It shocks me how different everyone's bacon is, even if most of them are using happy heritage pigs.)
- Basil, sliced up
- Thyme, taken off the branch
- Salt and Pepper
- Parmesan (optional, like everything else)

Method:
- Cook pasta like normal (in heavily salted water)
- While the water is getting ready for the pasta cook bacon until crispy
- Once bacon is crispy remove and cook the squash in the bacon grease with salt, pepper, and thyme (the squash is more caramelized than it looks)
- When pasta is ready add it along with the (crumbled) bacon to the now cooked squash in the thyme/bacon grease mixture
- Give everything a quick toss and top with lots of basil
- Add some cheese if you'd like and enjoy

Couldn't come together much quicker, especially with fresh pasta. As long as the pasta is damp when added to the squash there's no need for additional liquid. But I saved some pasta water just in case.

Eggs eye view

Or, breakfast for lovers of heat. This is a dish a friend of mine likes to have for breakfast when she's sick. It's a normal breakfast, but it'll clear the sinuses.

Eggs. Plum Creek eggs, Ohio Family Farms cream, Snake Hill Farm Siskiyou immature onions, dried chilis de arbol, garden basil, butter, and salt and Urban Herbs tellicherry pepper. I sauteed thinly sliced onion along chilis (seeded and pulled apart) in some butter with a little salt. Once the onions softened I added eggs that had been stirred to combine the whites, yolks, and a little cream to the pan. Stirring constantly, I cooked the eggs over low heat, adding some salt and ground pepper while they were cooking. Once everything was just about cooked (but still very soft), I added a little basil chiffonade. The basil brought out the best from the onions and chili, and generally made everything smell nice.

Potatoes. Small red potatoes from the Shaker Market, shallots from the same place, Parker's pancetta, underformed (green?) garlic from the garden, hot red pepper flakes, salt and pepper. I started by rendering small lardons of pancetta in a cast iron skillet. Once the pancetta was rendered I added cut up potatoes (with the skin still on), sliced shallot, pepper flakes, and salt and pepper. I put the whole pan in a 450 oven for a good ten minutes, and then under the broiler for about five more minutes. After the potatoes were cooked just about right I turned off the broiler and added smashed and minced garlic to the mix, stirred, and left the whole thing in the still very hot oven (with the heat off) for about five more minutes. Everything was crispy, but nothing was bitter.

And that was it. With some toast and tea it's a pretty acceptable breakfast that's ready to go in around half an hour.

Linguini, Mizuna, and Pancetta

Standard dried pasta, organic Mizuna from the Shaker Square Farmers Market, and Parker's pancetta (The views expressed in the Parker link are not necessarily those of the author, but some of them may be.), and some grated Parmesan.

Couldn't be much simpler. As the pasta cooked diced pancetta rendered in a saute pan. After the pancetta was crispy it was removed with a slotted spoon to a paper towel. About half the fat was poured out of the pan then the greens, which are remarkably like kale (but better), were sauteed in the fat with some salt and pepper. Then the drained but wet pasta was added to the mizuna and the pancetta was put back in the mix. A little cheese and it was good to go.

Breakfast and Dinner

A noir picture of loosely scrambled Plum Creek eggs with garden chives, Country Gristmill heritage bacon, and English muffin with butter and rhubarb preserves.

And dinner:

Plum Creek Rabbit cooked with rosemary (you can see where I tasted a piece) on a bed of radish thinnings coated with olive oil, salt, and pepper; butter and sugar glazed French breakfast radishes; grocery store sweet potato. Ideas for the rabbit and the radishes came from The Silver Spoon.

Not much of a hack job. I'll never get a job at Kaufmann's.

Pork and Beans

Or Pancetta and Cannellini beans, courtesy of one of Cleveland's finest ex-restaurateurs. Happy West Virgina pork belly cured by Kris Kreiger over at Chef's Choice Meats. The beans are saved from a crop grown last year in the heart of Ohio City.

More carbonara? Not sure, I think the options are limitless. As for the beans, these are for growing, not eating. A little piece of Italy right here in Cleveland.

Ramp Carbonara

While Googling to make sure I got the spelling right I ran across a recent post on this subject from some Cleveland area food guy you may have heard of. It's here (pretty nice picture too).

If you've read some of the older posts here you know I love this dish, and am not afraid to bastardize it (not only once, but twice). Here it's with Ohio Mennonite organic Berkshire bacon picked up at the Shaker Farmers Market (County Gristmill), Ohio City Pasta's vegan red pepper pasta, Plum Creek Poultry eggs, and ramp tops. The eggs and ramps are also from the Market. Not sure the wide red pepper noodles added to the dish, but they certainly didn't take anything away.

Eggs and ramps go together very well, as do ramps and cheese, which can be enjoyed these days on a pizza at Bar Cento (it's the chef's wife, but trust her on this). But ramp season is about over, which would be sad if it didn't mean that a lot of great stuff is on the way.

Can't be local all the time

A rainy day at the Shaker Market led to an impromptu trip to Gallucci's, an Italian import shop on the east side of Cleveland. The place is great with one of the most knowledgeable staffs out of any food place I've ever been to, even if they didn't know what bottarga (botargo) was. Don't let the Euclid construction put you off, just get on Carnegie and look for a small sign for the back entrance between E 69 and 65.

I picked up some bread, ridiculously good porchetta, and San Daniele prosciutto at Gallucci's. You can see alternating slices, starting with the porchetta on the left, pictured above. I dressed the bread with some Zinfandel/Thyme jelly from the Crocker Park Farmers Market and some French butter from The Cheese Shop, a place definitely worth stopping by when you're at the West Side Market.

That wine pictured above is courtesy of The Flying Fig, a restaurant discussed here all the time. and 55 Degrees, an Ohio wine distributor that, unfortunately, does not do retail sales. If you see a wine dinner that they're associated with I'd recommend going if you're a drinker. Last Wednesday they couldn't decide which of two wines to pair with the duck course at The Fig. Their answer, serve them both.

The sandwich was very good, although if I was doing it again I'd lay the slices out rolled thinly and going the long way, like sardines packed side by side. That way each bite would yield equal parts cooked and cured pork, both of which are delicious in their own right.

Tastes like Spring

Alaskan Halibut from Kate's Fish, Blue Oyster Mushrooms from Killbuck Valley Mushrooms, Bacon from Country Gristmill (organic, Berkshire), and Ramps from another vendor at North Union's Shaker Square Farmers Market. I know I'm not the first person around Cleveland to pair ramps and halibut this season, and I can understand why. Despite today's quick snowfall, the ramps are definite proof that it is spring. Morel's are right around the corner.

Ingredients:
- Halibut (or any fish)
- Blue Oyster Mushrooms (or any mushrooms)
- Ramps, cleaned (no substitute for the taste, but kale cooked with garlic could work well too)
- Bacon, chopped
- Butter
- Olive Oil
- Canola or other high heat vegetable oil
- Salt and Pepper
- Three pans

Method:
- Preheat oven to 425
- Melt a bunch of butter and very slowly saute seasoned mushrooms
- Once the mushrooms are cooked add some olive oil to taste and leave over a very low flame, stirring occasionally
- While mushrooms are cooking render the chopped bacon over moderately low heat
- Once bacon is crispy remove it to a paper towel and add ramps to the pan with some salt and pepper, turning the ramps around to coat with the rendered fat
- While ramps are slowly cooking heat up third pan over high heat and add equal parts butter and Canola (or other vegetable oil)
- Place seasoned halibut in the hot third pan, flesh side down
- Keep on eye on the ramps. I don't think it's too common to cook the stems and roots together, but these roots were thin and it worked well
- Once flesh side of the fish is well browned flip and place in hot oven until it's done
- While fish is finishing in the oven dry the ramps with a paper towel and plate
- Then plate the mushrooms, topping with the fully cooked fish
- Garnish with the crispy bacon

This was a great seasonal meal. Really simple and fresh. I'll likely make pesto with the rest of the ramps, which I'm keeping by storing them on the counter in a cup with the roots barely submerged in water and a plastic bag over stems. The ramps were a great surprise at the Farmers Market, although I think I was one of the few unsuspecting people there.

It's been a ramp filled weekend. Bar Cento is serving the stuff on pizza. It's great, but you may want to bring some gum for afterwards.

Yes we can . . .

make leftover sauce taste new, and do a whole lot of other stuff depending on who you ask (One of whose commercials are finally going to come to an end, at least for a short bit.). Pictured above is last week's tomato and sausage sauce, this time on pasta, refreshed with some sauteed sliced onions, diced carrots and celery, and dried hot pepper flakes. I also added a touch of cream and some pasta water. It was a whole new sauce.

After a very good dinner at one of my favorite Columbus (Ohio) restaurants, The Burgundy Room, last night, and with another coming up tomorrow at Bar Cento (check this out if you're curious--in collaboration with Slow Food Northern Ohio), a simple comforting meal seemed appropriate. As for The Burgundy Room, Monday night was retail wine night, with some really enjoyable bottles available for under $30. As for the food, the hits included a Snapper Special, a very solid Mixed Greens Salad (with some of the best onions I've ever tasted), a Beet Dip, a Rabbit Confit (served like a rillette), Shrimp and Grits, and awesome Caramel with very good Honey Vanilla Ice Creams. Misses, in the opinion of a co-diner and me, included the Green Apple and Celery Salad, and, in the same co-diner's opinion, Duck Spring Rolls (which I didn't try). Overall a great eating experience.

Does Cleveland's 2182 Bistro and Wine Bar stack up to The Burgundy Room? It's a totally different feel, but it may be the area's closest answer for small plates of pristine food and great wine priced reasonably. Can't say I'm a fan of the location though.

One meal of which I'll never tire

Bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich. Plum Creek egg, Country Gristmill Berkshire bacon, and Tillamook cheese. While the bread is only from Youngstown, the cheese traveled a long way. As for that, old habits die hard.

This is no Wake & Bacon from Melt, a nearby place always good for a grilled cheese, but I can still enjoy these for breakfast, lunch, and/or dinner. Let's just hope the arteries can keep up.

Nothing fancy

Soft Polenta with a Canned Tomato, Onion, and Sausage Sauce. Or, for those from the Cleveland area, Organic Polenta (Cornmeal) from the West Side Food Co-op, Big Daddy Onion and Organic Berkshire Hot Italian Sausage from the Shaker Square Indoor Winter Farmers Market (Not sure of the name of the folks selling the onion, but they're the only ones there with tons of onions and potatoes--the pork is from Country Gristmill, in the other part of the Market.).

For cooking the polenta, I just added cornmeal to water put on the boil with some salt. I cooked it down, stirring often, until the texture looked good. I added more salt, pepper, and butter to taste. The sauce started with sweated onions, to which I added the sausage. Once the sausage was cooked I added a can of tomatoes and cooked it all down, seasoning along the way. Added a quick garnish of chopped parsley and that was it.

Here are the leftovers the next day (after the polenta cooled I sliced and pan seared it, and cheese instead of parsley):

Smoked Pork Shoulder 1, 2, 3

An approximately 16 1/2 pound pork butt hacked roughly in half by weight. It's rubbed with Goya Adobo, with pepper. Very fancy, I know. 5 hours in the fridge, then about 27 in the smoker with two chunks of hickory until it reached an internal temp just shy of 190.
No shortage bark. Next, it was time for a wrapping in foil and a good rest in a cooler. And here's the result. Luscious pulled pork ready to be sauced (or not) and consumed. Maybe in tacos, or on nachos as they've been known to do in these parts.

North Coast Ragu

That Pecorino in the background may be gilding the lily a bit, but I didn't see any reason to forgo the pleasure. Pictured is the remainder of my box of gnocchetti sardi smothered in what may be the richest sauce ever. Making the sauce took a few minutes, but it was pretty simple.

For the sauce I sweated diced seasoned onions and a bit of minced garlic in olive oil with some chili flakes. Once everything was soft I added good quality, local, happy pig, hot Italian sausage removed from the casings and some chopped sage. Once the pork was chopped up, browned, and everything was mixed well I added heavy cream (from the same folks who raised the pig) to cover the sausage mixture and reduced the cream about 50%. To the creamy sausage mixture I added a whole can of tomatoes (organic, California) with juice (prior to adding I crushed the tomatoes, with clean hands, of course). The mixture was brought to a boil, and a good deal of tomato paste was added along with some more salt and pepper. After a little while over high heat it all reduced and got pretty tight.

This sauce is pretty hardy--think dense tomato sauce with a milk braised ground sausage base. If I ever make a non-vegetarian lasagna I'll come back to this.

Breakfast and Disclosures

First, breakfast. Plum Creek Poultry eggs (cooked in a bit of duck fat from one of their ducks--the black specks are pepper, the eggs are pristine) and Nitrate free Organic Berkshire bacon, both picked up at the Shaker Square Indoor Winter Market. Nothing special about the OJ, bread, or butter.

Now, on to the disclosures, and I'll add something to the "About" section in the near future. As of late I've developed some food related economic relationships around Cleveland. For example, I'm a vendor at the aforementioned Winter Market, which I unabashedly recommend all the time. I do that because it's a great market, and in my opinion it's a cornerstone for good food in Cleveland. I don't discuss my stand at the Market. Additionally, discussions have been had and small relationships established with some of the restaurants mentioned here. As far as that goes, every place I've been in touch with regarding business has been a place whose food I enjoy (pre-relationship or non-relationship) and whose philosophy I agree with or can live with. Also, we're not talking about big dollars here.

This disclosure is particularly timely after the Wine Supper referenced in the previous post. The Supper was great. Not flawless, but very, very good and a real treat. I'm hesitant to give a full review because I don't trust my own neutrality, but it's fair to say that the pizza, fish, cheese, and dessert courses were all right on. The suckling pig in the baby animal course, however, could benefit from being tweaked a bit. I also would've killed for a cup of coffee at the end, but it was kind of late so that may have just been me. Also, my table had a great server, but there were times where it would have been nice to have a few questions answered, and one staffer who was pouring wine, who knows why, blatantly poured a wine from a previous course rather than from the current course's selection. That was strange, particularly since he realized what he was doing, and it was a wine supper. After we mentioned that we noticed what had happened, the situation was remedied at our table--the less observant folks one table over were not so lucky. All in all, a great dinner that is sure to be even better as the Bar Cento staff gets used to hosting these things. After all, this was the first such dinner they've done there. I can't wait till the next.

I guess I couldn't help myself with the review. At least there was a disclosure.

EDIT - After rereading this post I realize it may seem like I didn't enjoy the wine dinner all that much. That's not the case at all, I just got rambling on the few things that bugged me, which is to say that just about everything else couldn't have been much better. It was certainly one of the most enjoyable dinners I've had in Cleveland, or just about anywhere else. And as for my gripe about no coffee, they were giving the stuff away after I took off.

Another good one from The Economist

Not super current, but timely nonetheless. It's a good read:

A DISSERTATION ON ROMANIAN PORK
Nov 15th 2007

Sometimes it is better not to apply the full rigour of European rules

THERE are two reasons why Romanian farmers face an anxious first Christmas in the European Union. One involves a lot of money; the other how to kill pigs. Revealingly, the biggest grumbling is about the pigs.

Here's the link for the rest.

I have some Romanian roots. That may explain a lot.

Prose, with a side of potstickers (or is it pot stickers?)

Dumplings by Mary Griffith

My mother folds with her crackled ashy
tiny brown hands—veins bulging,
grooving all over, pulsing—lumps
of pink brainy meat, patches of steamed spinach, fresh
garlic, scallions, shrimp; I’ve watched her
dicing vegetables all careful, gutting pellets of shit
with her thumbnail from raw shrimp, gray and translucent.
She washes everything clean, sautés, mixes, browns, mixes—slips pockets
of lumpy pink garlic-shrimp-ground-scallion-spinach-meat
into dusty flour-powdered wonton wrappers, pinches them
into dumplings and browns each one
individually, then plucks the dumplings, bubbled brown, one by one from the frying pan with chopsticks, packs them in a purple quilted batik bag so big it’s practically a suitcase,
for my lunch.
She pours sugar, soy sauce, vinegar, garlic,
scallions, into an old jelly jar, seals it up and shakes it. Smells
like getting off a forty-hour flight, stepping drowsy
into hot, suffocating, Filipino air;
she packs me an apple, banana, tangerine, whole-wheat rice,
leftover beef stew, three napkins, an old milk jug washed
out and filled with mango juice, chopsticks—you’d think I wasn’t coming home
for days—a silver spoon, a note written in blue ink and perfect English.
Smiling proud she hands me her love in an oversized lunchbox.
At lunch other kids pull out brown bags, packed
reasonably lightly—cold thin slices of baloney
snug between two squishy gray brown pieces
of bread, canned fruit, potato chips, artificially
flavored boxes of juice. I pull the dumplings out of my purple bag. The whole
room smells instantly
of hot suffocating garlic; a blond girl,
dressed puffy in starched white, frowns,
scrunches her powdery cute pasty button nose,
tells me my food looks weird,
says it smells nasty. She’s offended, disgusted,
snapping into her bright neon orange tinted potato
chip, chewing with her mouth
open (my mother told me never to do that or I would sound like a baboi), she looks at my food like it’s bugs, like it’s slaves, like it is me that smells like garlic, like I must be dirty, stupid,
a disgraceful bastard monster child in a cage, I deserve to have the skin ripped off my skull
with the splintered rusty edge of a tin can; I ought to be ashamed
of myself for offending her and her processed, steroid-injected baloney. She’s got some nerve,
this girl—some fucking nerve!
But I’m the one who’s really got nerve;
I go home after school and my mother’s waiting for me,
tea’s poured and steaming, polka-dotted with rose petals
in my favorite bunny rabbit mug, steamed sticky buns stuffed sweet
with purple beans. She asks, smiling, happy, the same thing
she asks every day—Did I like the lunch
she made for me? And I’ve got the nerve to look her angry in the eye
and ask cold if she wouldn’t mind making something normal
for lunch tomorrow; something without so much garlic.
But she’s got nerve too, my mom, because for lunch
tomorrow I have a squishy baloney sandwich
and nobody at school feels offended.

The poem inspired the meal. But the inspiration alone does not a meal make.

The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. Mine was twofold. First, I had wonton wrappers, not potsticker/dumpling wrappers, so I had to use a can as a cookie cutter to make them round. When round, they were terribly small and couldn't hold much filling at all. Forget half moons this time around.

Second, I'm not good at origami. Never was. For great instructions on preparing potstickers, after referring to the poem above, look here, and then, as linked there, here. That's not to say I'd have done better with rounds instead of squares, but at least I would have had a fighting chance. I look forward to trying again with the benefit of having read the sage instructions.

Still, despite cosmetic irregularities, these tasted great. Nice texture and crispy bottoms. They were filled with an about 3/5 pork and 2/5 shrimp mixture combined with sliced green onions and some minced ginger and garlic. Salt and pepper too. I'm not going to go into detail here because the instructions linked above, and elsewhere on the internet, are better than any I can give. Same goes for the dipping sauce.

The one thing I'd recommend is making a bunch at a time, because it could be a bit of a mess (especially if you dice the shrimp by hand). Extras appear to freeze well after being given a light dusting of flour to keep them from sticking to each other. Next time I'll heed the advice of the linked posts and freeze them individually prior to bagging them, but I don't think it's too big a deal with these little packages.

Thanks to Ann for passing the poem along. I did what I could with the formatting.