Monthly Archives: September 2009
Scratch Cooking
| September 29, 2009 | Posted by admin under Uncategorized |
Executive Chef, Bryan Moscatello
I am a firm believer in scratch cooking, I think you should make everything yourself as long as space and equipment permits. Don’t get me wrong there are a lot of very good artisanal products out there but when you eat house made products compared to their store bought counterparts there is a distinct difference. That difference may not be a positive one for your product straight out of the gate but the beauty is that you can adjust, refine and tweak until you feel the flavor is spot on.
With some items say cured meats, it is harder to get the results due to the long curing process but for cooked sausages you can improve as you go by make little tasters before committing the entire batch to casings. I think it is the control element that makes me want to make everything. This rings true in restaurants other than your own a perfect example is ricotta cheese.
I buy a very good fresh product the problem is that when I think of the warm house made ricotta I ate at Ajax Tavern, man that was delicious. Unfortunately for me I do not have the space to produce the quantity of ricotta I need on a daily basis, so I buy the best I can. Pasta is another great example of fairly easy to produce but a much higher quality then the fresh industrial produced products that are available. House made and hand rolled pastas are soft and silky while still maintaining integrity when cooked. The industrial produced example however seems to be dry and hard.
Even the bacon that we cure and smoke in house is well worth the time and energy. I say these things because I believe this is the path to a bigger picture in the local dinning food world. This is traceability, I like the fact that I know where the hogs came from which we took the bellies, cured them then smoked them and finally ate a great BLT that was served with tomatoes grown by a farming co-op in the Shenandoah valley, lettuce from a hydroponic grower in west Virginia and olive bread made in house at Potenza.
It’s nice to know for a fact that my burger came from one specific cow on Valentine Miller’s farm. Having this knowledge is powerful especially when you are tasting this product against many others because you develop a relationship with the farmer by giving regular feedback and through that you end up with a more tender more flavorful product. Jeff Lawson knows exactly how I like my lambs so he picks out the ones that meet my specifications, and to date his lambs have done nothing but improve. How does this affect us as a whole? In my opinion if you know who is growing your food and they are people that are filled with pride in what they produce you in turn will have a better product that you needn’t overwork with outside flavors. In the end buy from your local farmers, who cares if every tomato isn’t a perfect red globe they don’t taste as good as the misshapen colorful examples any way.
A Fresh, Gourmet Twist on Lunch
| September 23, 2009 | Posted by admin under Uncategorized |
Executive Chef, Bryan Moscatello
Over the past two weeks we have begun to serve lunch at Zola Wine and Kitchen. The overall idea is to serve a very fast lunch at very reasonable prices. The twist is that these items being prepared are directly from local farms (the majority not the minority) and all of the items are made by us.
So the veal pastrami is first brined then peppered and smoked, the bacon is cured with apple and brandy before being smoked, burgers and meatballs are ground to our spec. as well as the salmon pastrami being cured by us and the trout hot smoked here as well. I could go on and on but won’t. Well maybe a little more, the breads are all baked fresh daily at potenza for us, our sister restaurant. I feel that this is a pretty cool twist on the fast service lunch joint. The other aspect of this operation that is also quite unique is that you are being served essentially in the kitchen. We are 100 percent transparent there is no hiding everything is cooked and served directly in front of you.
I find myself talking about this because I find it to be very exciting not only to be able to produce these products but to also be able to serve them to you in such a great environment. Did I mention that we also make the spicy sopressatta, salami finochiona, genoa salami and veal mortadella in house as well? I truly believe that there is nothing better in this profession then to produce all of your items in house utilizing raw product that you can trace back to a specific farm and feel proud that you know where it has come from. I must admit the one item that we will probably never produce in house is our cheeses. We do serve epoisses, parmesan, provolone arucchio, and a couple of others that are necessities in the well balanced diet.
So when you are walking by us on E street NW between 8th and 9th stop in say hi and at the very least grab a chocolate macaroon, they are amazing. Friday night Secret suppers will be starting up this coming Friday all I can say is that it is a multi coursed dinner based on one theme, this week is Valentine Miller farms Hog. Once you have secured your spot and arrive on Friday night the full menu will be unveiled and you can grab a bottle or two of wine from the shop next door and sit back and enjoy.
Dinner in the Field
| September 18, 2009 | Posted by admin under Uncategorized |
Executive Chef, Bryan Moscatello
I had been very excited about doing this event Outstanding in the field for some time now. I was however uncertain about many of the logistics like what does my mobile kitchen look like, what do the service platters look like, what happens when it rains, etc. so I put together a list of propane equipment and began to figure out my back up plan and started production.
Since this dinner depended on the local area farms to be our grocer we about a dozen different farms providing us with all of our food requirements from Green Hill Farms lamb to Rhapahonik River Oysters providing just that. The bulk of my ingredients arrived on the Friday before the event which was on the following Monday. So first taste all of the local produce, cook off some of the lamb and pork. Just to make sure it is all up to snuff. It was of course, there is something about produce just plucked from the ground the day before when it is optimally ripe. Next get meats in cure, brines and marinades. Then on
Saturday prep begins with the normal sauces, braising and stock making. Day two was but knife work.
Day three was the day of the event so it started early for a 3 pm function. We had to make 450 ravioli, 10 gallons of black salt caramel corn, 180 individual crème fraiche cakes, 200 pate choux puffs and 200 brioche wrapped oysters all before we left for the farm at 9 am. All this done the dry ice and U-Haul, yes U-Haul arrived and we began to pack I check my list and I had everything I needed as far as food goes. I revisit my first question what does my kitchen on the farm look like? I know that they have a professional kitchen but that could be as far away as a mile so that won’t be a viable option for every course. So I did what any respectable city chef would do and packed my slicer, my immersion circulator, a couple of fryers, extension cords and a case of sternos.
Easy drive to the farm and as I guessed the equipment I requested was unavailable so we pluged everything in and go. We started off at 3 pm passing Hors d’oeuvres for about an hour, my favorite was the popcorn sweetbreads served in mini brown paper bags. Then since we were on rain delay all day the dinner was moved to the barn, believe me this was not as much a barn as a luxury residence for horses. First course heirloom tomato ravioli with melted leeks and shave cow’s milk cheese from Laughing Cow Farm. Next was the summer chicken salad with shaved farm vegetables, peppercorn-honey gastrique, cracklings and slow poached egg yolk. Third was my favorite “the whole hog” mustard q ribs, braised belly, smoked hocks, sliced porchetta and sage sausage with pickled veges and mustard seed lovash. The fourth course was the sous vide lamb shoulder with grilled vegetables and goat cheese potato tots. We wrapped it up with the crème frache cake, corn ice cream and handfuls of the salted caramel corn.
The experience was great and I would definitely do this event again and I will not leave home without my immersion circulator it was indeed a life saver for re-eating the porchetta, lamb and cooking the slow poached eggs in a very controlled environment. Also a dozen or so sternos in a metal box makes for a great oven in times of need.
