The Rake Magazine

Category: Food and Drink

  • TC Spamalot

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    hang in there little buddy….

    During last night’s Top Chef, I seriously had no idea who was going home. It could have been anyone.

    But first … LOOOOVED the quickfire challenge. The chefs got $10 and 10 minutes to buy something from one designated aisle at the market. I feel this all the time, when the kids are firing 50.3 million questions at me and I’m under the gun to be somewhere else in 5 minutes, I sometimes make a crazy grab for something for dinner that night. It’s only when I get home that I realize that I have to somehow work pickled beets into the meal.

    Casey and Hung were the extremes: she went with an ultra-safe and boring pudding parfait while he went for psychadelic cereal wonderland. The best part was that he was actually pissed that they didn’t go kookoo for his cocoa puffs, literally scoffing at their lack of vision for his freakishly unappetizing egg and cereal mess. CJ could’ve been a contender, had he not mixed up his salts and sugars. I was ecstatic that Brian turned his back on the canned seafood and went for SPAM. It was a brilliant move, surprising and strangely appetizing. Maybe he was channeling our local SPAM master.

    And Howie. Oh, Howie.

    Didn’t it seem that everyone was a little slap-happy that morning? More on that….

    So Brian wins and nominates himself as head honcho. Good for him. They’re told that they have to cater a fashonista party for Esteban Cortazar. Note Padma’s look of excitement and everyone else’s look of “meh”. But who cares who the little dude is, they have to throw together a fabulous party for $350. On a boat.

    Menu is planned, ingredient choices are made, the team seems to be getting along, yada yada yada. Hello, did someone forget to light the fire … under the chefs?

    Truth is, their menu was boring (which was the main complaint of the judges) and they spread themselves too thin. They could have each done a singular WOW dish instead of a few average dishes. All this was said by the judges, of course. The funny thing to me is how shocked the judges seemed by the performances of the final seven.

    To me, it was quite evident from the quickfire challenge that the “cast” is a little crispy. While we, as viewers, had a break from Top Chef last week with a re-run, the kids are on it 24-7. It’s every day for them, and they weren’t allowed to bring cell phones or make contact in any way with the people in their real lives. Is it any wonder that they’re all a little fried?

    It’s a marathon, not a sprint. Did Hung use up all his ideas in the first few days? Can the little speedster make it to the finish line? Howie couldn’t. Tired of working to figure out what the judges want, he’d had enough of trying to be something he wasn’t: namely, anything other than an old-school kitchen curmudgeon.

    Only time will tell who is best suited for the bright lights and big demands of celebrity chefdom, who in the end will be able to dig the deepest and pull out a brilliant menu and a final win. It’s anybody’s game now.

  • Delicious Relief

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    When the rain started falling in August, it did more than just water the tomatoes. Sadly it washed away many of the season’s hopes for farmers in Southeastern MN. Many farmers found their homes washed away or their fields under contaminate water. Luckily enough, there is a sweet connection to the area with many local chefs: many of the fine ingredients you see on local menus are grown there, as were local Winona boys Scott Pampuch and JD Fratzke.

    Slow Food MN is helping promote an online auction that will benefit the flood victims through the Winona Red Cross and the Sow The Seeds Fund. The auction will be posted Wednesday September 5th and run through the 8th. Some of the tasty items that will bring relief: Slow Food book collection, tour of Cedar Summit Farm, one year’s subscription to Edible Twin Cities and a market bag filled with local products, a night at Moonstone Farm, cooking classes at Let’s Cook, and much more. There’s even a six-course dinner to be cooked and served by a secret panel of local chefs, to be revealed on Andrew Zimmern’s Friday afternoon radio show. Bid on people, bid on.

    If you’re looking for the full belly along with a warm heart, this Saturday is the night to eat out. One Big Night Out is a collaboration by area restaurants to donate a percentage of their profits to flood relief efforts. Let’s face it, those on board are the top localvores: Birchwood, Cafe Brenda, Craftsman, Corner Table, Heartland, Jay’s Cafe, Lucia’s, Muffuletta, Nicollet Island Inn, Signature Cafe, Spoonriver and others.

  • The Sausage Life

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    Fluorescent cube life getting you down? Do you dream of being your own boss, making your own way, calling the shots? Do you like sausage?

    A different life beckons Cherie Peterson and Merry Barry. Having created some of the best boutique sausages to ever grace a bun, The Sausage Sisters are moving on and selling their business.

    Their energy and vivacity while manning a market booth was as trademark as their black fedoras. If you have culinary passion, a quick wit, and a longing for challenge, this might be your chance to grab the brass link. Check them out at the State Fair if you want a glimpse of the chaotic fun and a sample of the brilliant Uffda brat.

    I really hope someone steps up. The potential to develop this company and market the brand is big. Plus I want my Texas Two Step and Porketta Marie avialable when I want them, thank you very much.

    Contact the sisters 612-986-8817 for more information … but maybe wait until after the Fair.

  • Fair Index

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    hey, you got some grass?

    Saturday’s Fair Index
    (with apologies to Harpers)

    Number of Lark-bound old ladies that got stuck in the fergaliscious crowd in front of KDWB: 2
    Chances that someone sucking down a shake by the dairy barn would step in dung: 1 in 4
    Ratio of fanny-packs to tube tops at noon: 5:2
    Ratio of fanny-packs to tube tops at 6pm: 2:7
    Chances that a 4-H kid got a fat man to fall for the dollar-on-a-string gag: 9 in 10
    In inches, the average overflow stack on area garbage cans: 15.6
    Percentage of people eating a turkey leg that also carried a pitcher of beer as their beverage: 22%
    Amount of time after horking down a soft pretzel that I was seduced by French crepes: 3 seconds
    Amount of time that I spent looking for a SPAM burger before giving up: 2 hours
    Percentage of my family that wanted to go see the Butter Heads with me: 0%
    Percentage of certainty that I will go again before Labor Day: 100%

    Tuesday is the REAL food day at the fair…Check out Carousel Park tomorrow for all the Minnesota Cooks action: chefs, food personalities, local politicians, and moi. I’ll be on the tasting panel at 11am tomorrow, sampling the work of JP and Tracy Singelton, and clanking forks with the revolutionaries of Axdahl Farms. Then maybe someone will go see the Butter Heads with me.

    Come on down now, ya hear?

  • Famous, but not a Grouse

    A colleague likes to talk about the Ivy League football games he went to as a graduate student at Harvard. Apparently they did not sing the Tom Lehrer Harvard fight song (“Wouldn’t it be peachy if we won the game …”); in fact, the crowd’s invective sounds as though it was scarcely more subtle than that practiced by supporters of Personchester United (as we must learn to call the English-speaking world’s best-known soccer club). The Harvard crowd, it seems, hit a nadir as it chanted at opponents “You may be winning but you still go to Brown,” with substantial emphasis on the final syllable.

    These thoughts often stream through what passes for my mind as I spend time in an England governed no longer by the gleaming grin of Tony Blair but by the altogether grimmer visage of Gordon Brown. One could say that the new British prime minister is the gray man of British politics, except that there has already been a Grey administration—the one headed by the Earl Grey, who gave us the 1832 Reform Act and that filthy tea adulterated with oil of bergamot, the English ancestor of Constant Comment.

    True, Mr. Brown has gingered things up by allowing eight ministerial colleagues to announce that they smoked cannabis in their youth, and also by appointing as a minister in the Foreign Office a former United Nations eminence who has dared to tell the United States that might may not always be right.

    Not the least gray feature of Mr. Brown is the granite town in the east of Scotland where he grew up. I once spent a whole morning behind a stall in Kirkcaldy marketplace (it’s a long story) and had ample opportunity to study the leaden clouds that lurched across the dreich wastes of the Firth of Forth before they unburdened themselves onto to the streaky concrete and dour stone of this dull burgh. The most famous son of Kirkcaldy is Adam Smith, promoter of the dismal science of economics and author of that famous page-turner The Wealth of Nations, which he actually wrote while living at home with his mother. (One wonders how many bawbees a week he gave her towards the housekeeping.)

    Mr. Brown is an apt epigonus of the dismal Smith. He has the tidy mind of an economist and, having applied it during the Blair decade to the nation’s finances, he proposes now to redesign that elegant organism, the British Constitution (it does exist, you know, even if it is not written down).

    To redesign it, that is, in all but the one particular where it cries out for alteration. When the Blair Administration invented separate national legislatures for Scotland and Wales, it allowed Scots Members of the United Kingdom Parliament to retain the right to vote not only on matters that affect the whole of Britain but also on those that affect only England. An English member now may not vote on the future of foxhunting in Scotland—pas de problème—but a Scots member may still vote on whether it continues in England.

    Many English people find this arrangement as quaint as some residents of the District of Columbia find their representation in the U.S. Congress. Mr. Brown thinks it is just fine, and for a very simple reason. The Labour Party, which he leads, has lots of support in Scotland: forty-five seats in the United Kingdom Parliament. His main rivals, the Conservative Party, have very little: only one seat. Does Mr. Brown admit that what worries him is losing all those Labour seats in the United Kingdom Parliament? Of course not; he blathers about sustaining the Union. There are plenty of Englishmen who would be happy to vote for complete independence for Scotland in hopes of resolving this anomaly.

    And to show there were no hard feelings, I am sure they would join me in drinking Mr. Brown’s health in a glass of The Famous Grouse. It’s the most popular whiskey in Scotland, available in Minnesota for around twenty dollars a liter. This whiskey is deeper and darker than most of the sweet, pale blends popular in the United States. But for all its firm flavor, the spirit rises through the eyes; there is taste but there is also tingle. It could lift the spirits of folk who dwell below gray skies. Though I suppose it is brown.

  • Hotdish, Rehabbed

    Seasonally, the time is right for hotdish. The weather is turning cooler, the oven has waited patiently while the grill has had its many days of glory. People are coming off their summer buzz and organizing, whether to boost a local sports team or join a church choir. And in this neck of the woods, anything that involves organizing usually also involves a potluck. Hotdish, of course, is part of the holy trinity of potluck, along with Jell-O salad and bars (that is, calorie-rich baked desserts, not drinking establishments).

    Newcomers to this area—that includes second-generation residents—tend to look at a hotdish and say “oh, casserole.” But here hotdish (single word, no article necessary) is not casserole, and we’re just as sure of that as we are of our favorite childhood circle game, Duck-Duck-Gray Duck.

    While hotdish and casserole may share the same culinary history, they’ve split in evolution. Both are a one-dish meal served directly from that dish, yet where casseroles have been accepted by the hoi polloi, hotdish has been relegated to nostalgic reminiscences about mom-cooking and church basements. Blame it on the cream of mushroom soup.

    Put simply, hotdish is a meat, a veg, a starch, a binder, and cheese thrown together into a Dutch oven or baking dish. The binder is often that cream of mushroom soup (otherwise known as Lutheran binder). If you use a red sauce as a binder, go ahead and call your creation goulash, but if you use beaten eggs, it’s no longer hotdish, it’s an eggbake. I don’t make the rules.
    At any rate, the timing may be right for a hotdish renaissance. The food mood has turned slightly nostalgic and cunningly comfortable:

    Witness the up-scaling of burgers, meatloaf, roast pork, and mashed potatoes at local restaurants. Why not hotdish? Tater Tot hotdish, arguably the crowning achievement of this food family, could be tweaked and improved on. Tuna-noodle hotdish could sing in the hands of a masterful cook.

    Nor, in our quest to update a classic, need we remain dependent on a gelatinous blob of canned soup, just because our mothers were. A roux is a fine binder, and making one is a skill easily mastered. We can use fresh herbs; we can use cheese that comes right off the farm. In short, it is within our power to evolve the hotdish and spread its warm love beyond the Midwest! I have a vision of millions of Lutheran ladies, Le Creuset crocks cradled in their oven mitts, marching forth in a campaign for the new hotdish.

    Some will argue that we should leave well enough alone, that a good hotdish is one well remembered, not updated into some upstart version of itself. My response? You can embrace tradition and still advance. I say make the hotdish of your youth when your heart calls for it. But create your own version, too—after all, the next generation will need to remember you.

    Chicken and Orzo Hotdish
    2 1/2 cups chicken stock
    1 1/2 lbs. skinless boneless chicken breasts
    3 Tbsp. butter
    3 Tbsp. all-purpose flour
    3/4 cup heavy cream
    1/2 tsp. salt
    1/2 tsp. black pepper
    1/2 cup freshly chopped sage
    1/2 cup chopped shallots
    1/2 cup crème fraîche
    1/2 cup chopped prosciutto
    1 cup freshly chopped spinach
    1 cup orzo pasta
    1 cup panko bread crumbs
    1/2 cup grated parmesan

    Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a 4-quart pot, bring stock to a slight boil. Add chicken and simmer, turning once, for about 6 minutes. Remove from heat and cover pot, letting chicken stand until just cooked through, about 15 minutes. Remove chicken to bowl to cool, but keep stock in covered pot.

    Over low heat, melt butter in 2- to 3-quart saucepan. Add flour and stir for 3 minutes, making a roux. Add warm stock while whisking, and simmer gently for 10 minutes, whisking occasionally. Whisk in cream and simmer for 5 minutes, whisking occasionally. Remove from heat, transfer to large bowl and stir in salt, pepper, sage, and shallots.

    Remove 1/2 cup of sauce to separate bowl and stir in crème fraîche. Chop chicken into 1-inch pieces and stir into remaining sauce.

    Cook orzo in boiling water until just al dente, then drain. Stir into chicken mixture along with spinach and prosciutto. Transfer the mix to casserole dish, spreading evenly. Spread crème fraîche topping evenly.

    Toss bread crumbs with parmesan and sprinkle over surface. Cover with foil and bake in the middle of the oven till bubbly (about 25 minutes), then uncover and turn on the broiler for 5 minutes to brown the top. Remove from oven and transport to your community function with care and pride.

  • TC Dream Team

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    Casey’s too cute to chop onions…

    Here’s the Big Lesson for the kids on Top Chef: Don’t Believe Your Own Press.

    The Dream Team of CJ, Tre, Brian and Casey sputtered out last night on the second version of the Restaurant Wars episode. You can’t even say they went down in flames, there wasn’t even that much heat.

    They were self-selected, the top of the pot, not like the other team which was made up of dodge-ball leftovers. But guess what…Leftovers never forget that there is something to prove. This is a competition and no matter what, no matter how many wins you’ve garnered, anyone can go home.

    It may be shocking that Tre is no longer in the competition (many pegged him to be a finalist), but it is more shocking that he couldn’t bring his team together to kick some ass. Sara did, and she did it with Howie sulking and shuffling around behind her.

    The Dream Team wasn’t concerned with putting out the best product, they were simply putting out a product that they thought could beat the Leftovers. They assumed this would be such an easy task that overcooked monkfish, salmon and cheese, and dry bread pudding could still rock the judges in comparison. Why bother tasting your food, when you know how good you are. Go ahead and send out crap to the diners, you’re going to Italy man!

    I liked Tre and I thought he was a real cook. He always acted with grace and poise and I’m sure he’ll be successful. But in the end, you’re judged by the eaters and the simple truth is: you get what you give. I hope this was a wake-up call to all the chefs, to stop resting on their laurels, thinking about their future Discovery Channel deals, and actually prove that they’re more than tv fluff.

    P.S. … What was the deal with having snotty, condescending Madonna’s brother as design guru? He must have a show in the works…

  • Genius-on-a-Stick

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    It’s that time of year when finding cutting edge eats means turning your back on the hoi-polloi and shaking hands with the common man. Forget your foams and chuck your sous vide, it’s all about the stick.

    The pioneers of fry-technology and stuffing-science are in high demand as we ponder what’s in store for 2007. How do they get that hotdish to stay on the stick? Is there anyone mad enough to attempt to engineer a Sloppy Joe for Stick Gastronomy? Hell yeah. Last year’s innovators succeeded and seem willing to push the envelope one more time in a that risky courtship of fanny-packers and the stroller mafia.

    New Food for 2007
    Axel’s: Sloppy Joes OAS (on-a-stick)
    Blue Moon Dine-In Theater: Peanut-butter hot dog
    Bridgeman’s: kickin’ it old-school with old fashioned ice cream sodas
    Coasters: Deep fried crumb coated apple fries
    Famous Fave’s: Pork knuckle sandwich and Kool-Aid pickles (I’m glad they changed from last year’s pickles which tasted like greasy relish)
    French Meadow Bakery: Rocky road scones OAS
    Fried Fruit: a newbie stand, offering batter dipped fried fruit
    Mike’s Hamburgers: Deep fried hot dog wrap OAS (yawn)
    O’Garas: Deep fried corned beef and cabbage OAS (pass me a Harp)
    Old English Fish and Chips: calamari (doused with malt vinegar, brilliant!)
    Potato Skins: Buffalo chips and cheese
    Rajun Cajun: Breakfast bread bowls and jambalaya
    Sausage Sister and Me: Introducing the Uffda Brat…Norske sausage wrapped in lefse (yah sure, you betcha)
    Scotch Eggs: Butterscotch cake OAS
    SPAM Burgers: SPAM burgers and fried SPAM curds (this one will garner all the buzz from the media foodiphiles)
    Tejas: BLP (bacon, lettuce, pico de gallo) quesadilla
    Ultimate Confections: S’mores OAS
    West Indies Soul Cafe: Fried plantains

  • Stink Fest

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    Garlic is often referred to as the Stinking Rose. Maybe that’s why this Saturday’s Minnesota Garlic Festival is being held waaaaaay out at the Wright County Fairgrounds. I imagine the westerly winds will soften the pungent aromas as they waft toward the Cities, so that on Saturday evening you will be struck by the odd craving for Italian food.

    But me, I’m going in full bore. I like my garlic raw and plentiful and I can’t wait to see what a day of garlic festing brings. I know I’ll be in good company, their line-up of chefs is top notch: Lucia Watson, Mike Phillips of Craftsman, Alex Roberts of Restaurant Alma and Brasa, Philip Becht of The Modern Cafe, Tracy Singleton of Birchwood, and Russell Klein (formerly of WA Frost). Sponsored by the Sustainable Farming Association of Minnesota, would you expect anything less?

    Think of it as your pre-season to next week’s extravaganza….

  • Finish Line Fries

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    I don’t love running like I love fried chicken, but I really can’t have one without the other. This summer, my daughter and I have been training for Jack’s Run, a race named for a little friend we know and love.

    But running is hard. And when it’s hot and humid and lazy and beach weather, running is very very hard. So I need a prize, and my prize is fries.

    Seriously, I could sit and eat Culver’s squishy salty fries dipped in vanilla custard every night of the week … but I don’t. Now that I’m logging some heavy road-time in my sneakers, I feel more able to succumb to my fried potato needs.

    And yet, if I’m going to indulge, I want it to be worth the miles. Clearly, I’m a big fan of Chino Latino’s Popocatepe which are like nacho-fries: loaded with guac, sour cream, black beans, pico, chile de arbol, yada yada. But I truly crave my own version of Buffalo-fries: tossed in wing sauce and drizzled with bleu cheese dressing and bleu cheese chunks. Not that good can’t be simple. Give me a hot, crispy cup of frites and a bottle of malt vinegar and I’m set.

    Sunday will be my first visit to Harry’s Food and Cocktails , so I’ll be on the lookout for the much-anticipated poutine. I hope it’s worth my Saturday morning.