Sunday, April 20, 2008

Multifunctionality and the Family Farm

There’s an interesting story on farming in the April issue of Gourmet. The story in general is about the federal Farm Bill and how it could support more innovation and conservation.

A sidebar titled “Analyze This” gathers a handful of telling facts, comparing Walworth County, S.D., and a five-county area in New York (Columbia, Ulster, Dutchess, Albany and Green counties), which I quote here:
-- Both regions have roughly 450,000 acres in agricultural production (just under half of Walworth County’s agricultural land is pasture).
-- Walworth County supports 322 farms. The five-county region of New York supports more than 2,500 farms.
-- In Walworth, the average size of a farm is around 1,500 acres. In the five counties, the average size is around 175 acres.
-- In 2002, Walworth generated $30,600,000 in market value for its agricultural products. The five-county area generated over $152,000,000 — five times more.
-- Between 2003 and 2005, the 2,500 farms in the five-county area received just over $5 million in government commodity payments. During the same period, the 300-odd farms in Walworth received $10.7 million, more than twice as much.

I think the main point the story’s author, Sam Hurst, is making here is that the government is paying a lot more to an area, Walworth County, that doesn’t generate as much money per acre. Another way of saying this is that Walworth isn’t giving the government a good return on its money, or, worse, is wasting taxpayer dollars.

But another point in these numbers is that it’s not the size of the farm, it’s how you use it.

The article talks about “multifunctionality” in farming, with diverse, sometimes niche crops.

I got wind of this in 2003 when I wrote about how some area farms were selling directly to such restaurants as Lucky 32 and Fabian’s.

When a farmer becomes a direct marketer to restaurants, or even consumers, his or her whole business model changes. Then the farmer is not just the farmer, but the salesman, middleman, delivery man, everything.

A curious thing happens when a farmer does this. Suddenly the farmer is able to make a living off just a few acres of carefully chosen crops instead of the hundreds of acres needed when growing a single crop and selling it wholesale to some corporation. In other words, starts looking a lot more attractive as a career choice.

This new business model is hard for many traditional farmers to get their head around. You’re telling me I can make the same money off three acres of heirloom tomatoes and specialty greens as 100 acres of soybeans? OK, that’s a hypothetical example, but the basic idea is true—most farmers are diversifying with small amounts of quite a few crops.

And I think that’s what’s happening in those five counties in New York.

Growing smaller amounts of niche crops often has great side affects, allowing the farmer to limit or eliminate use of pesticides. Best of all, it increases the amount of fresh food in the local economy.

This is already at work in North Carolina – just look at the increase in CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture programs) that sell produce directly from farms to families.

I don’t expect the federal government to give a big push to this anytime soon. But from where I sit, it’s looking more and more like the future of farming.

(Photo courtesy of Associated Press)

Friday, April 18, 2008

RIP, Rainbow News & Cafe

I’ve had this story on my to-do list for a few months - I’ve wanted to pick your brains about the shuttered local restaurants you miss.

Rainbow News & Cafe immediately comes to mind. When I was working on my first review during the summer of 2005, I reviewed Christopher’s New Global Cuisine (now simply, Christopher’s). Chef-owner Chris Fulk renovated a rambling Victorian on Brookstown Avenue for his fine-dining venture that was the former home of the Rainbow News & Cafe. It seemed like whenever I mentioned Christopher’s to someone, they began flipping through their memories of the Rainbow as if they were turning through an old album full of faded photos of friends. Oh, the vegetarian chili. Oh, the burritos.

I’ve heard similar anecdotes about Staley’s Charcoal Steak House, later the home of the short-lived, old-school glamorous, decadence-with-abandon Frankie Rowland’s (they laced their mashed potatoes with brie). Incidentally, on a local history side note, investigators looking into the doings of notorious former Davidson County sheriff Gerald Hege found that he and his cronies celebrated with at Staley’s - and paid their check with county money. I suspect some of you can still taste Staley’s steaks. In fact, I know - one reader e-mailed me in January with an entire list of their mourned restaurants. He was partial to Staley’s Chateaubriand (that inandof itself is a great throwback - Chateaubriand is a rather old-fashioned word for filet mignon).

And there are other restaurants you probably remember: Sam’s Gourmet, Leon’s, the Rose and Thistle.

So bring on the memories, please, personal and otherwise. I’m looking for people to interview (in case that wasn’t obvious). Send me an e-mail at , or call me at 727-7302. Please include a way to get back in touch with you in your note or voice mail message.

Thursday, April 17, 2008

April in Paris, and beyond

I just got back from a two-week hiatus in France, riding high-speed trains, gasping at the spring lettuces, radishes and artichokes in outdoor markets, cooking with a feisty Parisian in her apartment kitchen, and generally eating ridiculous quantities of crepes and foie gras and mini tarts, yogurt flavored with chestnut cream and yogurt flavored with rose and rhubarb, crusty little baguettes filled with Comte and rosette, goat cheese and pesto, roasted tomatoes and curried chicken. We did a lot of walking, too.

I can’t say that I still use any of the organic chemistry I took in college, but I did gain a lot of wonderful friends, including one who has split her years since graduation between North Carolina and the sweet southern French city of Montpellier. She’s there again this year, teaching English to French high school students, but she’s coming back in early May. So the Dinner Beau and I have been scheming and saving away for a trip to visit her since last fall, even as the dollar continued to fall, fall, fall against the euro.

We planned a whirlwind trip from Paris to Lyon (a city that fathered cutting edge culinary invention and my favorite, old-fashioned regional cuisine heavily based on pig) to Montpellier (smack in the largest wine-growing area in the world, the Languedoc-Roussillon region) and Marseille (spiritual home of the spicy fish stew, bouillabaisse). And while I understand that when many people visit France, and particularly, Paris, that they want to see this:

I was more interested in this:

And this:

And this:

Ooo, la, la, le fromage.

OK, the Eiffel Tower is beautiful (but caused uproar when it was built in 1889. Parisians wanted it to come down.)...so here’s another gratuitous shot from its bristly under regions at night:

In any case, I’m going to try to post a few entries on Dishing it Out over the next few weeks about my food adventures in France. I’ve returned, but I’m even more obsessed (not just with the food, but the whole French way - on the advice of a British man we met in Montpellier, I’m currently reading Sixty Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong, an ethological peek into French ways and customs by two Canadian journalists. It attempts to explain among many other things why the French have such strong ties to regional food, why they view cutting in line as something of a national sport and why they don’t generally pick up after their dogs when they do number two on a busy, pedestrian-filled sidewalk. Fascinating!).

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Berry Soon

I’m about tired of apples and bananas, the two fruits I favor during the winter and early spring. Thankfully, strawberry season in the Piedmont is set to start in about two weeks. I have my fingers crossed that a late frost doesn’t damage the crops.

I’ll have a full report in the Journal in early May, but I can’t help salivating now. Freshly picked strawberries are good, but they are made better by being the first fruit of the spring — actually in our area, I think they are the only fruit that ripens before summer.

So, to me, strawberries taste good not just of themselves but because they are in fat a taste of what’s to come — months of blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, peaches, cantaloupes and more.

I, for one, can’t wait.

The wait may become shorter in future years, because N.C. State University recently reported the development of a new variety that ripens early. Called Galletta, it is said to ripen a week to 10 days earlier than the Chandler variety that the majority of Piedmont farmers plant now.

Also, Galletta is supposed to producer a better quality strawberry than the early-ripening Sweet Charlie variety that currently is the earliest-ripening variety available in North Carolina.

Actually, N.C. State said that some commercial growers have already planted Galletta, though I haven’t found any in our area yet. Galletta plants should be available to home growers for planting this fall.

Thursday, April 10, 2008

D-D-D-Did You Say Downtown Dining?

As you may have read in my story April 10 in the Journal (Cat’s Corner story), Cat’s Corner Café is for sale. Two of the owners have personal reasons for getting out, and I believe the owners when they say the business is on a solid footing.

At the same time, I can tell the owners always wished that business was a little better.
Cat’s mainstay was lunch. But it had served dinner when it opened in June 2001. It nuked dinner after 9/11 because it wasn’t bringing in the bodies.

Cat’s tried at least once to resurrect dinner, but customers weren’t biting — even as downtown started to pick up.

Catt’s also experimented with breakfast to no avail.

All of this points to the tricky nature of successfully running a downtown restaurant in Winston-Salem.

From what I can tell, restaurant customers want a cheap, under $10 meal downtown during the day, and they want the feel of fine dining at modest prices at night.

As a result, such places at Cat’s Corner do bang up business at lunch, but can’t bring it in at dinner.

Sweet Potatoes is one example of a model that works — modestly priced, nice but not too nice, and, of course, very good food.

Other restaurants struggle, though.
Camel city Café has very good food and a great wine list, but failed to attract people at lunch, and even seems too fine dining for folks around here to fill up at nights. And the prices are quite reasonable. Is that just the Stevens Center restaurant curse? I don’t think so.

It seems like the perfect model of a restaurant in our downtown is one with schizophrenia: a place willing to churn out $6 tuna salad and burgers all day long at lunch, then changes in quasi-fine dining accompanied by only quasi high prices at night.

Tuesday, April 08, 2008

The Many Sides of Meatloaf

I hadn’t eaten any meatloaf in a while until a co-worker, Tom Fluharty, kindly offerred me some of his Italian-style meatloaf the other day.

Tom said he has been using the same recipe for 16 years. “But I had never actually made the exact recipe before — well this one isn’t even the exact recipe, but almost.”

Tom’ recipe is spicy with sausage and contains big hunks of sun-dried tomatoes and long strings of smoked mozzarella. It reminded of how appealing and versatile meatloaf is.

Almost everyone has their favorite version of meatloaf, and everyone seems to stick to the same version, making it again and again. But it’s a big world of flavor out there that has room for plenty of innovation. The folks at recipezaar.com recently sent me an e-mail bragging about the meatloaf recipes on the site.

They have a bunch of different versions. What would you guess? Ten? Twenty? Fifty?

Nope. They have 1,496 recipes for meatloaf on the site.

Most of these are made with ground beef, but they also have turkey, chicken, veal, bacon, and sausage meatloaves, and quite a few that use a combination of meats.

They have meatloaf with brown sugar, horseradish sauce, barbecue sauce, curry — you name it. Oh, and, yes, vegetarians can have their meatloaf, too (with lentils and oats, in one version). There are meatloaves with spinach, rye bread, cranberry glaze. The site even has several recipes for meatloaf for meatloaf haters.

My favorite title among the recipezaar recipes is Yes, Virginia! There is a Great Meatloaf. The recipe itself is very basic — a little ketchup, brown sugar and onion but nothing out of the ordinary. But the title reminds me of the inherent problem in a dish that is so versatile: It’s often bland.

I usually make a fairly plain meatloaf. I used to make it for my kids, thinking that the relative blandness of what is basically hamburger stretched with bread would appeal to them.

I was wrong. The last couple of times I made meatloaf, my kids turned up their noses at it. I still don’t know why.

So I haven’t made it in about a year. That is going to change, though. I don’t know whether I will make Tom’s recipe. I’m as bad as he is about taking a recipe on paper and fiddling around with it in the kitchen.

But I thank Tom for reminding me of the great appeal of this All-American dish.

Italian Meatloaf
This recipe appeared in The Seattle Times in 1992 in an article by John Hinterberger.
Though the recipe doesn’t specify it, I recommend chopping the sun-dried tomatoes before putting them in the meatloaf as they can be a bit too chewy when whole.
Tom made a few changes in the meatloaf he shared with me. He used Neese’s hot sausage in place of the Italian sausage because he likes it. He was short on mozzarella, so he supplemented what he said with a bit of Swiss. And because he didn’t have any red wine or tomato juice on hand, he creatively substituted a combination of ¼ cup ketchup and ¾ cup champagne. Note that this recipe calls for fresh bread crumbs, not the dry ones sold in stores. To make fresh bread crumbs, tear up a few slices of bread and process in food processor.
2 pounds lean ground beef
1 pound sweet Italian sausage, casings removed
1 medium yellow onion, finely chopped
5 small garlic cloves, minced
3 cups fresh bread crumbs
1 cup chopped Italian (flat-leaf) parsley
2 tablespoons Italian seasoning
½ teaspoon salt
Several grindings of black pepper
2 eggs, lightly beaten
½ cup tomato juice
½ cup dry red wine
2 cups fresh basil leaves
4 ounces sun-dried tomatoes (packed in oil), drained
1 pound smoked mozzarella, thinly sliced

1. Heat oven to 375 degrees. Combine ground beef, sausage, onion, garlic, bread crumbs, parsley, Italian seasonings, salt and pepper in a large bowl. Add eggs, tomato juice and wine. Mix thoroughly.
2. Lay out a large sheet of waxed paper. Spread the meatloaf mixture into a 12-by-15-inch rectangle on the paper. Arrange the basil leaves over the surface. Scatter the sun-dried tomatoes over the basil and arrange ¾ of the cheese on top.
3. Using the waxed paper as an aid and starting from one short side, roll up the meat like a jelly rol. Peel back the paper as you roll. Press on the meatloaf lightly to seal and place in a jelly-roll pan (a baking sheet with 1-inch sides) or on the bottom of a broiler pan that has been lined with foil.
4. Bake 1 hour. Place remaining slices of cheese on top and bake 10 more minutes. Serve hot or cold.
Makes 12 to 15 servings.

We’re better at more than barbecue

The James Beard Foundation Awards are the Pulitzers, the Oscars and the Grammys of the food world all rolled into one. They cover new cookbooks to magazine articles, design and graphics to chefs and restaurants. There is even a humanitarian award (this year’s winner is France Moore Lappe, author of Diet for a Small Planet)), and awards for restaurants that embody traditional regional American food. This year the list includes a Seattle restaurant that is the only survivor from the city’s Japantown neighborhood and a summertime clam shack in Maine.

The 2008 nominees were announced earlier this year. The winners will be tapped on June 8 in a black tie gala ceremony at Lincoln Center in New York, with a reception to follow. Oh, la la. I’m sure the food will be good.

Best chefs are divided out by region. This year, nominees for the Southeast are Hugh Acheson of Five and Ten in Athens, Ga., Arnaud Berthelier of the Ritz-Carlton in Atlanta, Linton Hopkins of Restaurant Eugene in Atlanta, Robert Stehling of Hominy Grill in Charleston, S.C., and Mike Lata of FIG, also in Charleston.

I walked pass FIG when I was in Charleston last fall. I can’t for the life of me what was on the menu posted outside the small, unassuming building’s door. I remember it sounding simple, but delicious, and even if it was November, fresh and clean. Sadly, it was a Monday, and FIG, like most every restaurant worth its salt, was shuttered. We ended up waiting for a table at a so-so Italian place for something like 45 minutes, gnawing on our knuckles as we looked at the menu. Except for that, it wasn’t very memorable. (Though, by the way, if you are in Charleston sometime soon, please do check out EVO. It’s a pizzeria in the style of the now closed Botta Bing! and Botta Boom! pizza places that Fabian Botta once operated, except that the menu at EVO is smaller, tighter, even more seasonal. The friendly little restaurant is located on an appealing strip of downtown North Charleston going through some serious urban renewal. North Charleston is nothing like Charleston proper - it’s a lot less touristy, grittier and less antebellum - but this place - and the peppery chowder made with local clams available seasonally - is totally worth the side trip.).

I think it’s notable and disappointing that no North Carolina chefs made the cut this year, though. I mean, where’s Andrea Reusing, the craft and spirit behind the stylish and sleek Asian restaurant Lantern in Chapel Hill (a place that made Gourmet’s most recent list of 50 best restaurants - a photo from their dining room is above)?

Reusing did make the initial cut of preliminary nominees. So did Scott Howell of Nana’s in Durham, and Chip Smith of Bonne Soiree in Chapel Hill. And I have no doubt that Lata and Co. deserve the accolades. But it’s a little maddening for me - and hopefully other observers of the North Carolina restaurant scene - to see Charleston and Atlanta so dominate the nominees. We’re good at basketball, sure, but why can’t Tar Heels get some cred for their charcoal-grilled pork meatballs with a herb salad, peanut-hoisin and chile-lime sauce (a dish on a recent specials menu on Lantern’s website)? Oh, and Vietnamese shrimp and rice soup with pea greens, or sea scallops over fiddle head ferns, roasted fingerling potatoes, grilled yellow peppers and chanterelles, and ginger lemon-lime cheesecake with lychee, lime and candied ginger salad (from a Nana’s menu in early March).

Thursday, April 03, 2008

Nobody puts cauliflower in the corner

If you read today’s review, you’ll see that one of my favorite things at Hutch & Harris Pub, a new downtown restaurant, is a humble little crock of cauliflower. Oh yum. I get hungry thinking about it now. It’s not complicated, it’s not fancy, and it’s certainly not made with pricy ingredients, but it’s tasty. Hutch & Harris’ kitchen steams it, then mashes it with butter and minced parsley.

At the Print Works Bistro in Greensboro, you can order a side of Brussels sprouts (along with lentils and potatoes dauphinoise on its highly Frenchified menu). I haven’t had them yet, but I’m eager to try them. This winter, I got more interested in Brussels sprouts than ever before. Oh, if my 8-year-old self could read this, she’d be aghast. I liked spinach then, and broccoli - with cheese, and even then, I pretty much refused to eat anything but the bushy, flowery tops. I hated the stems. I wouldn’t have touched Brussels sprouts with a ten-foot pole. I’m glad my taste buds grew up.

Eating seasonally means eating what’s available. At in places where there’s winter - including North Carolina - that means cold weather vegetables that are also somewhat strongly flavored. Assertive and hearty, they are the winter coats of the produce world. I count Brussels sprouts in that group, as well as cauliflower, cabbage and kale. They happen to be good for you, but braised with some good bacon, or caramelized and sprinkled with Gruyere or Gouda, these vegetables are delicious, too, and certainly more interesting sides than the usual green beans and mashed potatoes. Make no mistake, I’m not talking about cauliflower with Velveeta cheese sauce. If you treat them right, vegetables will return the favor.

That said, I wonder how I’ll feel if those vegetables remain on those menus come July. Why take up space when it’s tomato time?

Tuesday, April 01, 2008

The Little Salad Bar That Could

A funny thing happened last week on the way to my salad story. I stumbled upon a neat idea for dinner that seems to achieve the near-impossible task of pleasing all four of my family members.

The idea isn’t new. In fact, you can see it at work in thousands of restaurants across the country. Yes, I am talking about a salad bar.
What was new, at least for me, was throwing together a salad bar at home.

I had been testing recipes for my salad story, so I had a couple of cooked meats, homemade dressings and countless containers of cut vegetables crowding my fridge.

So, not really thinking that my family would like it, I declared that we were having meat salads for dinner.

Normally, I probably would have made one salad for everybody and then portioned it out. But because on this day I had such a load of ingredients, it made more sense to put everything out on the table in separate bowls.

I had cooked and thinly sliced steak and pork chops, creamy blue-cheese dressing and tangy Dijon vinaigrette, cooked potatoes, grated Parmesan cheese and croutons. And then came the vegetables — carrots, onion, celery, radishes, lettuce, spinach, red pepper and avocado. I also had some orange segments.

This dinner was a big hit.  To me, the highlight was all the vegetables, but the keys to success were actually the extras. I highly recommend offering cheese, a starch such as croutons or potatoes, and fruit — especially in a household with kids.

I knew this dinner was a success when my wife and daughter — both of whom are hardly the easiest eaters to please — said that they wanted to pack leftovers for lunch the next day.

I’d guess that part of the fun came from the interactivity of assembling our own meals, but I also think my family members each enjoyed picking what they wanted to eat. For a change, I wasn’t force-feeding them one entry, like it or not.

I can’t remember ever eating a regular family dinner as a child where my parents offered me choices. Maybe it’s the fragmented (and narcissistic) world we live in. But my little salad bar brought home the idea that the best meals are those that offer choice.

Friday, March 28, 2008

Easier Grilled Asparagus

Grilling and roasting are my two favorite ways to eat asparagus.

Either way is pretty easy, but what I love most about them is the concentration and depth of flavor that they give this delicate delicacy.

Roasting asparagus requires nothing more than coating the trimmed spears with oil and putting them on a sheet pan in a 425-degree oven for about 10 minutes, depending on how thick they are. I usually add salt, pepper and sometimes minced garlic, and lemon juice and lemon zest.
With domestic asparagus in season now, I made my first batch of roasted asparagus last week.  With the temperatures warming up, I’m tempted to fire up the grill.

Grilling asparagus can be a pain, because the long skinny spears tend to fall through the gaps in the grates of the grill. That, to me, is a depressing sight.

In the past I have solved the problem by using a grill rack, which is basically a perforated metal tray that sits on the grill. It works fine, but it reduces the amount of charring and grilled flavor that I get when the food sits directly on the grill.

But the other day I saw a solution so obvious that I felt stupid for not having thought of it before. This method uses two skewers to create a “raft” of asparagus.

The photo of this that I saw, from the California Asparagus Commission, had five spears lined up and pretty much jammed together, with no space in between the spears. I prefer to have a little space between each spear for even cooking and better browning.

Still the general idea is a good one. Line up about five spears and push one skewer through all of them near the trimmed end. Then take a second skewer and push it through all of them near the tip end. Bundled together, the spears can’t possibly fall down in between the grill grates. The skewers also make it much easier to flip the spears when it’s time to brown the other side.

The asparagus have to be decently thick for this to work. Trying to do it with pencil-thin asparagus will be tedious and frustrating, believe me.
When grilling, keep in mind that the asparagus need a light coating of oil before they go on the grill. Otherwise, they are likely to stick and get torn up when it’s time to flip or remove them.

Instead of just plain oil, I often will coat asparagus — and many other grilled vegetables — with vinaigrette.

Here’s a recipe I adapted from the California Asparagus Commission to try:

Grilled Rack of California Asparagus
The original recipe recommends soaking the bamboo skewers in water to prevent them from burning. I don’t think that’s necessary for this recipe, because the cooking time is so short. Metal skewers also will work here. The original recipe also called for blanching the asparagus in boiling water first. I would recommend this if the grill were extremely hot and the asparagus extremely thick. Otherwise, it’s easier and just fine to skip the blanching and cook the spears entirely on the grill.  If you happen to have blanched asparagus, reduce the cooking time below to 2 to 3 minutes on each side.
1 pound asparagus, medium to large
2 tablespoons shallots, chopped fine
1 tablespoon sweet mustard
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
½ teaspoon salt and pepper
1 tablespoon fresh herbs, your choice, chopped
8 to 10 six-inch wooden bamboo skewers
Chopped fresh herbs and lemon zest for garnish

1. On a cutting board divide the bunch of asparagus into servings of about 6 spears. Line up the servings in a row. Run one skewer 2 inches from the top and a second skewer 2 inches from the bottom through all the spears to create a horizontal rack. Try to allow a little space between the spears. Repeat with remaining asparagus and skewers.
2. For the vinaigrette, combine the shallots, mustard, vinegar, salt, pepper and herbs in a jar with a tight-fitting lid. Close the lid and shake well, about 10 seconds,
3. To grill the asparagus, liberally brush the asparagus on both sides with vinaigrette to coat well. Grill racks over medium-high heat 4 to 5 minutes on each side, or until tender. Top with chopped fresh herbs and lemon zest. Serve with extra vinaigrette.
Makes 3 to 5 servings
(Photo courtesy of California Asparagus Commission)