Braised chard, honey-ginger glazed carrots, and filet mignon

Posted on March 10, 2013 by

IMG_9217 (683x1024)The filet isn’t my favorite cut of beef (that would be the ribeye), but I do enjoy them from time to time — especially when I come a across a couple for a good price as I did tonight. We’ve talked before about how to make a good steak, so I’ll just sum up the process in a few words: good oil, hot cast iron, and plenty of salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Of greater interest to me tonight are the side dishes. I wasn’t really in the mood for a meat-and-potatoes dinner, and when I stumbled onto some lovely rainbow carrots and Arkansas-grown baby chard at the market tonight, I knew just what I wanted to do — glaze those carrots with ginger-flavored honey to add sweetness to the plate and braise the chard with a lot of garlic and lemon to add some colorful and tangy brightness. Both preparations are quite simple, but quite delicious.

Honey-ginger glazed carrots

  • IMG_9215 (683x1024)1 pound carrots. I used a bunch of multicolored ones, but the good old orange variety are just fine.
  • pinch of salt
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • 3 tablespoons butter
  • 2 tablespoons honey
  • 1 tablespoon fresh ginger, minced

Scrub and peel the carrots, then cut them on the diagonal to form medallions. Toss them with the olive oil and salt and roast them in a 450-degree oven for 15 minutes, until just tender and starting to brown. In a saucepan, heat the honey, butter, and ginger over medium heat and cook until the butter stops foaming and the ginger begins to turn translucent. Add the carrots, stirring to coat with the honey mixture. Cook for 5 minutes until the carrots are nicely glazed. Try not to drink the honey mixture — it’s really good.

Braised baby chard

  • IMG_9227 (683x1024)4 cups baby chard, chopped
  • 4 cloves garlic, minced
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1/2 fresh lemon

Heat the olive oil in a non-stick skillet. Add the minced garlic and cook for 2 minutes, taking care not to brown it. Add the chard, stirring to coat the greens with the oil and distribute the garlic evenly. When the chard begins to wilt, squeeze the half-lemon over the pan, stirring well once again to coat. When the leaves begin to give off liquid, the chard is done. Various types of vinegar can also be used to add a bit of acidity to these greens — play around to see what tastes you like the most.

In the end, the side dishes we made tonight wound up being a bigger star than the steaks — although the steaks were pretty good. Pan-wilted greens are a lovely addition to any plate, both for the eyes and the tongue, and the natural sweetness of carrots is made only better by the addition of honey. Happy cooking!

IMG_9213 (683x1024)

 

Posted in Recipes, What's For Supper? | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Agony and the Ecstasy

Posted on March 5, 2013 by

sushi closeupYears ago, I read a book by Crossett native and former OU and Dallas Cowboys coach Barry Switzer called Bootlegger’s Boy, mostly because my parents hail from Crossett and my grandmother always shook her head when referring to those white trash Switzers. In the book, Switzer describes the Oklahoma football program as a “monster” that can never be fed enough wins to keep it happy — feed the monster a national title once, and it wants another every year. I feel like this blogging game is a bit like that from time to time: research a post, write it, edit it, post it…and take too long to savor it and a week’s gone by and nothing’s been posted. Readers drift away, and a touch of guilt sets in. Writing for a newspaper is even worse, which new issues coming out weekly (in my case) or daily that leave very little time to say “Good. That was good work. I’m proud of that.” But I wouldn’t trade it for anything, except maybe the freedom to do it full-time. It’s been an up-and-down week for Arkansas food, so let’s take a look.

rc13A particular high note was the annual Arkansas Times “Readers Choice” issue, a food-packed issue that I had a good bit to do with. A feature article about our friends at Loblolly Creamery was my main by-line, but I also contributed a dining review as well as several capsules in the feature discussing the 52 best dishes in the state of Arkansas. The 52 dishes were a lot of fun to work on, bouncing ideas back and forth with my Eat Arkansas colleague Dan Walker and our editor, Lindsey Millar. Both of those guys are quite knowledgeable about good food; they’re both also damn fine writers, so it was an honor to be included with them and the rest of the Times staff in this issue. Check the issue out online, or grab a copy — and soon, because feeding that monster means a new issue hits newsstands on Thursday.

You have to have a thick skin when it comes to writing, and as a matter of fact, you have to have a thick skin when it comes to cooking, too. I’ve been guilty of letting my temper get the better of me, like the time I blocked one of our crazy-face local bakers from my Twitter feed because they told me I didn’t know what I was talking about one night. Blocking somebody on social media is one thing, though, and melting down completely is another. Which brings me to the mysterious case of Jay’s Pizza, whose owner, Jay Baxter, responded to a negative review on The Mighty Rib blog by going supernova all over the comments section and his Facebook page. Unfortunately, I didn’t save any of the now-scrubbed comments from Facebook, but you can read his initial comments at the link above.

IMG_2739Now Kevin over at The Mighty Rib is a good friend of mine; but despite the bias of friendship, I really didn’t see what the issue was with the review. He said good things (that the people were nice) and he said some negative things (the pizza wasn’t good). Bad reviews happen. If you can’t handle them, stop cooking or get better at it. I’ve never been the sort of food writer to go after somebody just to be mean (neither is Kevin), but sometimes the food just sucks. And if there’s a place you visit with the intention of writing about it, you’ve got to write about it, good, bad or in-between. It’s a competitive world out there, and you’ve got to get good or get out.

Which brings us to the last bit of Little Rock food doings, the return of the inexplicably popular Hot Dog Mike. Now, I’ve got no problem with the guy, although he’s not nearly as friendly in person as his online persona would lead folks to believe. But in January, he made a big deal out of leaving Little Rock, stayed gone for 28 days, then came back with plans for some sort of wiener empire. The news stations went nuts; Twitter went nuts; and a lot of us food writers were left shaking our heads and wondering what all the hoopla was about. Because here’s the thing about Hot Dog Mike. While I respect the work he’s done for charity, and I admire his abilities to successfully self-promote…his hot dogs aren’t anything special. They’re basic store-brand hot dogs in store-brand buns with canned chili and the like on top. Sure, he mixes it up by grating chocolate on them or throwing some tomatoes on the top, but the dogs aren’t that great. They’re pretty generic, in fact. It’s all style over substance, and as somebody who goes to eat looking for well-executed tastes that broaden my horizons, the whole Hot Dog Mike mythos in Little Rock is a mystery to me, because his food does none of that.

If that sounds harsh, it shouldn’t: the guy’s far more popular than this blog ever has been, and we’ll do nothing to tarnish his image. But I’d hope that the people of Little Rock might find better food to treat with such adulation — because there’s certainly better food out there. I, for one, am a little bored of the whole saga, and consider this post to be the last words I’ll write on the subject.

And thus the monster’s fed. For now.

Posted in Food Trucks, Meta, Restaurants | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Homemade Butter

Posted on February 18, 2013 by

IMG_9184In this amazing age of supermarkets and convenience stores, why would anybody want to make their own butter? For the food nerd in me, the answer is simple: to see if I can. But I came to home butter-making for a practical reason, too — I had a couple of baked potatoes almost done in the oven and not a stick of butter to be found. Now yes, there are several places to buy butter nearby, but those taters were ready to GO, and I was hungry for the New York strips I had coated with pepper and ready for the skillet. So I had resigned myself to butter-less potatoes when it hit me: I had a half-pint of heavy cream in the fridge leftover from another recipe I had made a few days before. And what is butter made from? Cream. Lacking a proper butter churn, I took down the Kitchen-Aid, slapped on the whisk attachment, turned it on and within a few minutes I had a ball of pale golden butter, perfect for my potatoes. It’s a fun process, so if you want to play Little House on the Prairie (with a Kitchen-Aid Mixer), keep reading.

IMG_9154

First off, you’ll need that cream and your stand-mixer. Dump it right in, and put on the whisk attachment. You can make this stuff in bulk, but we like to just make small batches of table butter — there’s only two of us, and we like the stuff too much to make a lot. Turn your mixer on high-speed, around an 8. Let it whirl.

IMG_9167

Soon enough, the cream will thicken and you’ll have one of the most wonderful things on earth: whipped cream. You may be tempted to add a touch of simple syrup and vanilla to the pot now, mix, and eat with a spoon — but stay with us, we’ve still a ways to go.

IMG_9170

Keep beating, and soon enough the cream will get kind of gnarly looking. We call this the “steakhouse butter” stage because it looks a lot like the whipped margarine you get at cheap steakhouses (but it tastes a lot better). Whipping the cream has forced the fat in the cream to cling to itself, which first allowed air to be trapped (whipped cream) and now the fat globules are getting so big that they are losing their fluffiness and beginning to turn into real butter. There’s still a lot of moisture here, though, and we want to get it all out so that we only have the pure butter-fat. Keep beating.

IMG_9176

There will, at last, come a magical moment where the fat finally turns loose from the water. This happens rather suddenly, and if you’re not careful, the liquid — buttermilk — will splash everywhere. Turn the mixer down until it looks like no more fat will separate. Strain the butter from the buttermilk — and take a taste of that buttermilk. You’ll find it’s nothing like the cultured product sold in the supermarket (it’s quite yummy). You can return your butter to the dry bowl and beat it some more; more moisture will come out. Finally gather your butter together and rinse it with ice water, changing the water until it stays clear. This gets the last of the water out of the butter and keeps it from going rancid. Add a touch of sea salt if you like, or add herbs, or leave it unsalted for baking. They say necessity is the mother of invention, and in this case, the need for butter on my spuds made for a fun discovery. Happy cooking!

IMG_9184

Posted in Recipes | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Restaurant Memories: The Bohemia

Posted on February 11, 2013 by

bohemiaThere’s still a restaurant called Bohemia in Hot Springs, and by all accounts it’s a fine a wonderful place that serves some of the best food in the Spa City. I haven’t eaten there for a variety of reasons, but mostly because I just don’t find myself in that part of town to eat very often these days. That wasn’t always the case, though, because the Bohemia, the original Bohemia, was not only one of the best restaurants the state of Arkansas has ever seen, it remains one of the greatest restaurants I’ve ever eaten at anywhere. I don’t recall my first meal at the place, nor my last one, but I can think of several spirited dinners that took place over sauerbraten and schnitzel, and it remains the only place I’ve eaten a Baked Alaska worth talking about.

Fans of the old Bohemia will remember Adolf Thum, the gruff and garrulous owner and chef who, along with his wife, kept a clean restaurant and ran a tight ship. Always eager to strike up a conversation with his diners, I can recall many a night where he would regale us with tales of his exploits as a Merchant Marine in the 1950s, cooking for upscale hotels in New York and Chicago as a slightly older man, and how he used to only pay his own son $20 for an entire weekend’s worth of work in his kitchen. I was a younger man then, and ate several meals with friends who might kindly be described as “hippies” — long hair and afros were the order of the day. Thum gave those guys no end of hell about their hair, swearing up and down that if any man during his days at sea had let himself go like that, the other sailors would steal his clothes and shoes, telling their scruffy compatriot that “the Holy Ghost took them.”

Apart from his quirky, yet friendly nature, the man could cook. Homemade bratwurst, Bavarian style sauerkraut, roast duck, and the aforementioned sauerbraten and schnitzel were all favorites of mine. It was Thum who taught me the difference between the cuisine of Western Germany and his homeland on the border between Bavaria and the Czech republic in the east. It was Thum who explained to me the first time what it meant to braise a cut of meat, and how soaking a piece of beef in wine could both tenderize its texture and temper its flavor. And it was Thum who came to his restaurant at 5am every Sunday to prepare his specialty: a steamed dumpling that is still the most perfect platform for any kind of sauce I’ve ever eaten. These dumplings were, in size and shape, like slices of French bread, but steamed. The texture was silken, pillow-soft and while neutral in flavor, Thum would share the method of their eating with all newcomers: let the thing soak in the sauce of your dish until you were almost done, then eat with gusto. It became the favorite part of any meal I ate there.

Thum retired and closed his restaurant in 2007; I found this out only when I went to take my then-new girlfriend (and future wife) to dinner there just a few weeks after the shutdown. I can honestly say that it was a moment of pure loss for me, and the grief I felt was like that of losing a friend or loved one. That may sound silly to some of you — but I’ll bet you never had Thum’s pickled beef. I wish I had some pictures of the food from those days, but I had yet to stumble into this whole food-writer career. What I do have is memories, of a warm dining room, good food, and one of the most unique men whose food I’ve ever had the privilege to eat: Adolf Thum.

Posted in Restaurants | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Drunken Beans

Posted on January 27, 2013 by

IMG_9092I know this might surprise some of you, but there are times when I do really stupid things. Sometimes those things are forgivable, like eating a bag of Famous Amos cookies and a Diet Coke for lunch, but sometimes I pull some really egregious shenanigans that embarrass even me (and I’m a guy known to order pig intestines in restaurants). My most recent bone-headed move was buying a growler of Josiah Moody’s fantastic Scotch Ale yesterday at Vino’s…and then just letting it sit. By the time I got around to cracking that bad boy open, a lot of the carbonation had escaped, and I was left with the knowledge that I had committed quite a sin against one of God’s gifts to mankind: beer. And not just any beer, but a beer that I’ve waited around to be brewed since last year, from my favorite brewery on the face of this great earth. Something had to be done, something that could live up to the quality of the beer I had so carelessly mistreated. There was but one answer: a big pot of drunken beans.

IMG_9089Michael’s Drunken Beans

  • 1 pound dry beans. Pick your favorites. I like red beans the most with barbecue, so that’s what you see here, but this technique works with pintos, black beans, or navy beans.
  • 1/2 pound bacon
  • 1 onion, diced
  • 3 cloves garlic, minced
  • Salt and pepper
  • Your favorite barbecue sauce. Make your own, or use a good bottled kind. I’m using a new (to me) brand called “My Uncle’s Sauce” that was given to me by a nice guy I met recently who is trying to open a food truck. It’s good stuff.
  • Beer. If you want to use cheap, horrible beer, that’s fine. A good amber ale works nicely with beans. And since I’ve got some half-flat Scotch Ale at my disposal tonight — I’m using that.

Don’t worry about soaking your beans overnight. Cover them without about an inch of water in a kettle and bring them to a boil on your stove top. When they’ve reached a boil, turn the heat off, cover, and let sit for an hour or two. During this time, cook your bacon. You can either cook the 1/2 pound I called for and retain the meat and fat, or you can admit you are a bacon fiend and cook an entire pound, eating half and leaving yourself with a second half pound for the beans. Up to you — I won’t tell anyone.

Rinse your beans in a colander, returning them to the kettle. Pour a bunch of beer into the beans. If you have enough to cover them, do that. I like to pour in enough to get right to the point of covering them and then add some chicken stock for extra flavor. Crumble up the half pound of bacon you didn’t eat and toss into the pot. Using some of the retained bacon fat, cook the onions until they become translucent and somebody from the next room says, “My GOD what are you making that smells so good?!” When that happens, add the garlic just to tease them and saute for three more minutes. Dump the whole lot — onions, garlic, and bacon fat into the pot. Bring everything to a boil and then reduce heat and simmer for about an hour. Add liquid if needed — more beer, stock, or water.

Once your beans have gotten soft and most of the liquid has been absorbed, add in as much of the barbecue sauce as you’d like, and adjust your salt and pepper to taste. Put the kettle into the oven and cook baked-bean style until the barbecue sauce has darkened and begun to caramelize. If you like sweeter beans, add a touch of brown sugar before baking. If you like hot, add your favorite hot sauce. Use your imagination. You’ll be left with a pan of beans flavored with the rich barley malt flavor of beer and brought to perfection by tangy barbecue sauce. Serve with cole slaw and barbecue chicken — or whatever floats your boat. Enjoy!

IMG_9112

Posted in Recipes, What's For Supper? | Tagged , , , , , | 8 Comments

Final Seattle Round-up

Posted on January 9, 2013 by
zeitgeist

Zeitgeist Coffee

As the second week of 2013 gets underway, I find myself possessed of a few odds and ends from Seattle that are not quite big enough to make into a whole post but too good to just forget. So as a way of capping my on-going series from the Pacific Northwest, I present to you this round-up of all the little things worth knowing:

Best Coffee Shop: How do you pick a favorite coffee shop in a part of the world known for them? Take two tired people, add in a lot of walking in the cold, and stir with the fortuitous find of Zeitgeist Coffee. This Pioneer Square coffee shop was spacious, wonderfully noisy, and served up huge cups of strong, creamy coffee that warmed us and got us back up and going when we needed it most.

Mr. D's Gyros

Mr. D’s Gyros

Best Street Food: We ate a lot of good street food, but our hands-down favorite was the gyros wrap from Mr. D’s Greek Delicacies in the Pike Place Market. Tender shaved lamb, tangy tzatziki, and soft pita made this one heck of a sandwich. I’m a little nuts for gyros anyway, so it was a great pleasure for me to eat this messy mass of Mediterranean deliciousness.

Best Food we Bought for Other People but Wound up Eating Ourselves: Chukar Cherries. Not only that but we ate more free samples than was probably polite. Don’t worry, we brought some replacements home for everyone else.

Fish n' Chips

Fish n’ Chips

Biggest Discrepancy: The waterfront was home to both our most expensive meal and our least, with the least being a paper tray of crispy battered cod and a pile of potato wedges served alongside a bowl of clam chowder. While nothing about this little meal was mind-blowing, the fish was hot and tasty, the potatoes nice and mealy, and the chowder was creamy and good. As a quick meal, we certainly could have done worse (and, in fact, probably did).

There were, of course, a few places that just barely rate a mention, including the strange little Mexican place we had nachos and Coronas at on our second night, the odd-ball coffee shop/art gallery where we shook off our celebratory post-election hangovers, and the many pastries and snacks we grabbed on the go. Seattle is a great town for food, and while Jess and I didn’t even begin to scratch the surface, we just take that as a reason to go back. Cheers!

 

Posted in Review | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

The Arkansas Foodies 2012 Year End Thing

Posted on December 31, 2012 by

mjwedHere we are at the end of another year — Jess and I couldn’t have asked for a busier, crazier, better one than this one just finished. When 2012 began, Arkansas Foodies was a small blog just finishing its first full year of existence, and Jess and I were an engaged couple trying to make gourmet food in a tiny apartment kitchen down in Saline County. Of course, small kitchens aren’t a detriment to good cooking — take a look at the Smitten Kitchen sometime and see the size of her kitchen! In addition to our cooking, we attended festivals, saw the food truck scene deal with some growing pains, and tried to bring all of you honest, informative restaurant reviews and foodie news. In March of 2012, Jess and I began working for the Arkansas Times, providing restaurant reviews and pictures for both their weekly print edition as well as becoming one of the main contributors to their Eat Arkansas blog. Suddenly, this plucky little blog began drawing all sorts of traffic, and we got to know all sorts of people in the Little Rock food scene (moving up here into the middle of things helped).

elliotbayOf course, the main excitement that happened in 2012 (even more exciting than winning Runner-up for Best Blog and Best Website from the Times’ Reader’s Choice Awards) was the fact that after a long engagement, Jess and I got married. We had a small, elegant ceremony at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Hot Springs, followed by a fantastic week in Seattle for our honeymoon — something that’s old news to all of you regular readers. We also got to know a lot of our fellow food writers, first at our jamon iberico tasting at Hillcrest Artisan Meats and then through a series of lunches that saw me, my Eat Arkansas partner Dan Walker, and Kevin Shalin of The Mighty Rib eating everything from Southwest Little Rock barbecue to French bistro food in the Heights. We laughed, we scoffed, we certainly got indigestion — and I couldn’t ask for a better lunch crew, nor better dinner companions than Kevin and his wife Sara and Dan with his wife Lindsey.

aaathumbupSo here, at the end of the year, when people tend to reflect, I must ask: did I learn anything? I learned that new friends can come sometimes when you least expect them, and that old friends are the people who never give up no matter what. I learned that my family loves me even more than I thought they did, and that they’ll do anything in their power to keep Jess and me safe and happy. I learned pimento cheese is a lot more popular in Arkansas than in Texas, that dermatologists can talk mad game about foie gras, and that a growler from Vino’s is a welcome guest at any dinner party. Lastly, I learned that there are a lot of you out there, and you teach me about food every single day. Thank you all for reading, and from Jess and me: Have a wonderful and happy New Year! Cheers.

Posted in Meta, Review | Tagged | 4 Comments