Tuesday, September 08, 2009

Fair Fried

It’s fair season, and the Dixie Classic Fair in Winston-Salem will run from Oct. 2. through Oct. 11 this year.

If you already are salivating at all the fattening food you can enjoy (?) at the fair, here’s some food for thought.

On Labor Day, judges at the Texas State Fair in Dallas declared deep-fried butter the most creative dish at the fair, according to a report by the Associated Press.

I thought people had deep-fried about everything, but they always manage to think of something else.

According to the AP, “Abel Gonzales kept his entry simple: 100 percent pure butter that is light and fluffy and sweetened with several flavors then surrounded in a special dough and deep fried.”

The flavors are sweet cream, cherry and garlic.

Gonzales also fries up Coke, peanut butter, jelly and banana sandwiches and cookie dough.

The overall best-tasting dish at the Texas State Fair was fried peaches and cream.

By the way, once the Dixie Classic gets under way, check the Journal and www.journalnow.com for a report on our own fair food, fried or otherwise.

Friday, September 04, 2009

Hungry for Bookmarks

Bookmarks book festival is coming up Saturday, Sept. 12. It has moved downtown, around Trade Street, this year.

As usual, cookbook authors will not only be signing books, but also doing cooking demos.

Best of fall, they give out samples of their dishes, and it’s FREE.

Notable this year is an appearance by Frank Stitt, the author of Frank Stitt’s Southern Table and Frank Stitt’s Bottega Favorita. The latter is on Italian food, and that’s the new book from which he’ll be demonstrating.

Stitt, who owns three restaurants in Birmingham, Ala., is probably one of the best chefs in the Southeast. His cooking combines a love of French and Italian with a Southerner’s heart.

He may use polenta instead of grits, or pancetta instead of bacon, but you can’t deny the Southern feel to his Italian food and vice-versa.

Check out my Sept. 9 story on all four cookbook authors coming to Bookmarks.

For a complete schedule of Bookmarks authors and events, visit www.bookmarksbookfestival.org.

Wednesday, September 02, 2009

Back to School

For all of you who read Tim Clodfelter’s story this summer about Foothills Brewing Company’s beer school, but didn’t get a chance to enroll, beer school is back.

The brewery’s newsletter landed in my inbox yesterday, and while the September session is nearly full, the brewery says there is room for hop-happy students on Oct. 24 and Nov. 21. Both classes start at 2:30 p.m. The class is the same training Foothills’ employees are expected to do. Tim says the class he attended in early August lasted roughly two hours.

Tickets are $10 each, and include a tour and tastes of all the beers on tap plus a class on the brewing process.

Tuesday, September 01, 2009

Simply Summer—Fruit

Sometimes, in cooking and in life, simple solutions are best.

Take desserts in summer. When we have a wealth of beautiful fresh fruit, why make a frosted cake?

The recipe below, more or less a crisp, takes summer fruit and adds just a select few ingredients before popping it all in the oven.

The original recipe, from the American Institute for Cancer Research, listed an optional topping of a tablespoon of shredded coconut. But when summer fruit is so good, it doesn’t need the flavor boost. Heck, you could skip the nutmeg and cinnamon, too.

Bonus: Just 180 calories and 6 grams of fat in a serving.

Baked Summer Fruit
Recipe adapted from American Institute for Cancer Research. Frozen, pitted unsweetened fruit may be substituted.
Cooking spray
4 cups mixed stone fruit (plums, apricots, nectarines, peaches), peeled, pitted and sliced
1 pound cherries, pitted and halved
4 tablespoons whole-wheat flour, divided use
4 tablespoons brown sugar, divided use
1/2 cup rolled oats
1/4 cup sliced almonds or chopped walnuts
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons canola oil
2 tablespoons honey

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray 9-inch square baking dish with cooking spray.
In mixing bowl combine sliced stone fruits with cherries. Sprinkle with 3 tablespoons of the flour and 2 tablespoons of the sugar; gently toss.
In another mixing bowl, make topping by combining oats, almonds and remaining flour and sugar. Add nutmeg, cinnamon and salt. Gently whisk to mix. Stir in oil and honey thoroughly to blend.
Spread the fruit mixture in the baking dish. Pour the topping evenly over the fruit. Bake until the fruit is bubbly and topping is slightly browned, about 50 minutes. Remove from oven and let stand for 5 minutes. Serve warm or at room temperature.
Makes 8 servings.

(Photo courtesy of American Institute for Cancer Research)

Friday, August 28, 2009

Jim Noble in the Spotlight

Chef Jim Noble gets a mention in the September issue of Southern Living for his commitment to local food, and his combination of gourmet yet casual Southern-tinged food.

The magazine’s offers an abbreviated profile with what most people around here already know.

Useful for anyone, though, are Noble’s personal recommendations of what to order. At Noble’s Grille in Winston-Salem, he suggests the fried oyster salad and the pan-seared sea scallops.

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Julia Child-mania Continues…

I’ve finally gotten around to watching the first disc of The French Chef on DVD - spurred on by, guess what…Julie and Julia.

Julia Child started hosting The French Chef on public television station WGBH Boston in 1963, growing out of presentations that Child had done to promote Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vol 1, the famous French tome she co-authored with Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle.

At the time, cooking shows were in their infancy. Today, TV chefs have all sorts of resources to instruct them how to cook on camera, so a lot of it comes off as rather glossy and stylized. The refreshing thing about The French Chef is how unfussy, and even clumsy Child is on camera. Goofy, even. During an episode devoted to what she gleefully calls a “french fry free for all,” she shows us how to fry potatoes four ways, and warns viewers to keep “kooks” and “kiddies” away from the hot fat. The same lady who we see chatting with Nice market vendors in French as she buys olives and capers for a salad Nicoise is human enough to lose the handle on one of her frying baskets, and fed up with it, chuck the whole thing under the counter. Adorable. I’ve only worked my way through six episodes, but I particularly like the one that centers around bouillabaisse and another episode about french onion soup during which Child goes into a long speech about knives.

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Food Inc.

Food Inc., the movie that won the award for best documentary at the RiverRun Film Festival, is finally playing in a Triad theater.

You have to go to Greensboro, though. It’s at the Carousel Battleground theater.

Here’s my review that ran in relish during RiverRun:

Food Inc. has a definite point of view: that the industrialized food system in the U.S. has produced an abundance of cheap food at the expense of Americans’ health and the environment. The movie comes from Participant Media, which made An Inconvenient Truth, and director Robert Kenner, and was co-produced by Eric Schlosser, the author of Fast Food Nation.

The filmmakers contend that the concentration of food production into a handful of companies has helped change food production more in the past 50 years than in the past 10,000 years.

That concentration gives companies tremendous economic and political power—to influence government policy, what food is planted, how workers are treated and, ultimately, what America eats.

The film works best when it tells personal stories, such as that of Barbara Kowalcyk, whose son died at age 2 1/2 from E. coli poisoning. Kowalcyk has worked for six years to get legislation to give the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture authority to shut down plants that produce contaminated food, and it still hasn’t passed. When Kowalcyk is asked to say how her family eats differently now, she refuses to answer for fear that some food company will sue her for libel.

Some of the other examples of corporate power are even more disturbing. Food Inc. is a clarion call for revamping the way food is produced in this country.—Michael Hastings

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Cuke Crazy

I just came back from doing a cooking demo at the farmers market at Krankies coffeehouse downtown.

Actually, I was not cooking, but preparing raw food to highlight some of the wonderful fresh vegetables at the market.

I made some salsa and marinated sliced tomatoes, but the big hit was the cucumber agua fresca. This is a beverage of cold pureed cucumbers with lime juice.

When I first made this back in July, I was blown away by how good and wonderfully refreshing it is. Everybody who tasted it today had the same reaction.

The taste is clean, the preparation is simple, and the results are fabulous.

You can get the recipe for cucumber agua fresca and some other unusual dishes with cucumbers by clicking here.

Monday, August 24, 2009

A Green Thumb and Community Spirit

In celebration of National Community Gardening Week (Aug. 23-29), Eat Smart Move More North Carolina and the North Carolina Community Garden Partners are offering help with starting a community garden.

Primers on how to start a community garden are available at www.eatsmartmovemorenc.com and http://nccommunitygarden.ncsu.eduhttp://nccommunitygarden.ncsu.edu.

The site also offers help in finding existing community gardens and resources for people who already have a community garden.

Friday, August 21, 2009

Great Gravy

At dinner the other night, we remarked how gravy makes everytthing tastes better.

We were trying to get our son to eat some brown rice that we served along with green beans, roast chicken and gravy.

It wasn’t the first time I had uttered the thought.

Gravy really does makes everything tastes better, even breakfast.

I’m known for some unusual breakfasts. Lately, I’ve been trying to get more vegetables into my morning meal. It’s not too difficult, considering that most of my breakfasts are dinner leftovers.

So the other day, I had some of that leftover chicken and rice. I minced a bunch of my homegrown zucchini with onion, mixed it with rice and chicken, and then added the coup d’etat—a couple of tablespoons of leftover chicken gravy.

Boy, was it good.

The next day, I added a minced jalapeno to the mix—if only because I have more jalapenos than zucchini.

Gravy train, indeed.