Emptying the Fridge with Friends

This past weekend, I invited a couple friends from college to make the 45 minute trip from Middlebury to Burlington for dinner at my house. They said that Wednesday worked great, but that they would have to find a car. They asked around, and come Wednesday afternoon, I hadn’t heard anything final. So I didn’t end up making a trip to the grocery store. At about 5 o’clock I got the final word that three of them were coming up after going for a short run. They would arrive around 7:00. I thought for a second that I might be in trouble, until I looked in the fridge. Working with a butcher leaves me with an abundance of meat products, so the proteins would not be a problem. I had two NY Strip steaks, three and a half chicken breasts, two house made veal and apple bratwursts, a half pound of shrimp, and two very fresh-looking whole mackerel.

The easy solution to me seemed to be the grill. I readied the meats for the grill, seasoning the steaks with salt and pepper, and the chicken with a dry rub consisting of salt, cayenne, garlic powder, cumin, coriander, and paprika. I cleaned up the shrimp, gutted the mackerel, and seasoned them with salt and pepper as well. Everything was ready for the grill, but I was still unsure about what else we would be eating. I looked around and found the kitchen staples: onions, garlic, and carrots. I also had bought a couple of fairly large leaks earlier that day.

So I started with chopping up a few strips of local applewood smoked bacon. I rendered the fat out of these in the pan, and removed the crispy bacon pieces. I diced up the onions and garlic. I sliced the carrots into thin rounds, and chopped up the leaks pretty finely so that they would become tender relatively quickly. I started sweating the onions, garlic, and carrots in the bacon fat and a bit of extra virgin olive oil. Shortly after, the leaks entered the pan as well along with a couple tablespoons of chopped fresh thyme. I seasoned as I went along, and threw some fettuccine in a pot of boiling water because I knew a group of cross country runners would need it…

The pasta was cooking and before I knew it, the sautee of the vegetables had turned into a braise (through the addition of about 2/3 of a bottle of a local Oktoberfest) with aspirations of turning into a hearty “condimento” for the pasta. While the alcohol cooked off, the pasta finished cooking. Well, I drained it just shy of being done as I wanted it to finish cooking in the sauce. The vegetables were now nice and tender, and the alcohol had cooked out of the beer. I added a tablespoon or two of honey, a handful of grated parmegiano reggiano, some salt and pepper, then added the fettuccine. I turned the pasta around in the pan, covering each strand with the beer, honey, cheese, and vegetables. After a minute, I removed everything to a large bowl, drizzled a few tablespoons of olive oil over the top, and the dish was finished.

My friends, realizing I had not used a recipe, decided they would fittingly name the dish "beer noodles"

While all of this was happening, I had filled the grill with a variety of meats. The chicken came off just cooked through and juicy. One steak I took off at medium rare, and the second I let cook a bit longer than i would have par the request of a guest. The bratwurst had started to release some of its juices into the grill, causing some excellent flare-ups to occur. They came off with the smaller chicken breast and the medium rare steak.

First of three plates of meat to come off the grill

The meat was all charred and delicious. I served the chicken with a homemade barbecue sauce I had in the fridge. The mackerel was flaky and flavorful; full of bones, but I didn’t mind eating around them. The pasta was excellent, with the crispy bacon bits served in a bowl on the side. My friends slowly but surely made their way through the absurdly large bowl of past, and by the time my parents were home, it was gone. The “beer noodles” definitely held the malty flavor of the beer, and this was complimented well by the sweetness of the honey and the fruitiness of the olive oil. An equally successful dish may have evolved from a local hard cider braise (holding the honey might be necessary in this case).

At the end of the night, we had each eaten beyond our heart’s content. My mother, returning from a trip the New York City for work, was very grateful to see empty space in the fridge. I guess I need to find ways to get friends over to the house more for dinner. It certainly helps diminish the ever growing stock of meat that we have, thanks to my work with Frank the butcher at Healthy Living Market.

Pasture Raised Pig and Lamb on the Menu at Bluebird

This fall I began work in the meat department at a local co-op in Burlington. I am learning a lot, and it has been fun. Weekly deliveries include whole pig, veal, lamb, venison, and sides of beef. I was surprised at how comfortable I was in the walk-in, ducking around hanging carcasses and removing innards with my bare hands. In my first days, I had brief moments when I would be reaching for a box of assorted beef cuts, and I would look to my right, only then noticing what I had pushed out of my way. Had I really not noticed that it was an entire half of a pig that I so rudely pushed aside?

Needless to say, in the development of my culinary interest over the past few years, using all parts of an animal is something that doesn’t leave me with an uneasy feeling. It excites me. This is not uncommon among my coworkers, and I had heard the word Bluebird thrown around a few times. From what I gathered, they had been there for dinner, it was something a little different for Burlington, VT, and they had very good things to say about it. They spoke mostly of the interesting menu and how they had made their way through nearly the entire thing. They were not talking about multiple visits. They were talking about the night before. I was going to have to go soon. I needed to experience this, or at least have my own experience of what they had to offer.

So I went with a roommate, my mom, and my step-dad. I have spent the last couple months living with one of my best friends, and he is experiencing many foods that he never would have thought. He was extremely reluctant at first but has become more adventurous each week we wake up across the hall from each other. My mom, I am still working on.

We had a reservation for 7 o’clock on a Wednesday, and we were seated when we arrived at a nice table in the corner. The restaurant, as its name would suggest, has a tavern feel. It is dimly lit with earth tones surrounding all diners. Shortly after we were seated, the server took our order. We ordered a couple of  “snacks” including  a salad of marinated and raw  vegetables. As it is fall, there was an assortment of root vegetables with a few greens, well dressed as to complement and not mask the flavor of the vegetables. My roommate and I had the warm uni with a warm mustard vinaigrette. The sea urchin roe had a nice, creamy texture and the aroma and taste immediately transported you to the ocean. The mustard vinaigrette was very mild, and I found that it neither added or took anything away from the dish. My mom seemed pleased with the deviled farm egg, and the entire table was impressed by the chicken liver toast. The liver was cooked well and was not too grainy or mineraly. It came with charred pieces of toast and a simple and sweet cipollini onion jam.

In addition to the appetizers, the chef also sent out a couple of complimentary bites. One was a little ball of liver terrine dusted in crushed pistachios. It looked nice, but I could not try it, as I have a mild nut allergy. The other was a little cube of deep fried head cheese. It was fairly good, but the fried breading was the prominent flavor rather than the terrine of pork.

For the main courses here, most are recommended to go along with another dish, or in our case, two or three. Mr friend and I shared a few dishes. We ordered the oysters and a fluke crudo that our server brought out first. The oysters were very good. They were fresh and served raw on the halfshell. They were served with a lemon vinegar that was excellent. It was very tart, and the lemon paired well with the briny oyster. The fluke crudo was not outstanding, and it was a very small portion. The raw strips of white fish were fresh, but fluke is a mild white fish, and serving it with breakfast radish and small shavings of cracklin (pork rind) did not add much to the dish. Along with these, I ordered a rare vos, a Belgian style amber ale. It came with a good head on and was enjoyed with the rest of the meal.

The tapas sized dishes did not stop here, which was a good thing for my hunger, but it did help keep the bill down. Our next four dishes came out along with what my mom and step-dad ordered for their main course. They shared the double burger and a celery root soup that was served with baby scallops floating somewhere in the middle of it. The soup was flavored with ham hock, but I found that it was surprisingly sweet and lacked a real celery root flavor. Oh yeah, I tried their two dishes as well. The burger was fairly good, but nothing too special. The meat was well cooked, but was served with a boucher blue that I am surprised to say was nowhere near overpowering. That is generally what I worry about when a burger is served with blue cheese, but with at least the bite I took, the cheese may as well have not been there.

The four dishes my friend and I were sharing included a veal heart dish, razor clams, a squid spaghetti, and a flatbread with falafel. I started with the razor clams which came with a couple of fingerling potatoes. The potatoes were not bad, but the razor clams were excellent, very tender with a good flavor reminiscent of the ocean. The squid spaghetti and the flatbread were probably my least favorite plates to come to the table. The squid ink pasta was well cooked, but the squid ink added nothing but color. The squid in the dish was a little bit tough, and I found that the saffron vinaigrette was a little heavy and lacked any hint of saffron. Then there was the flatbread. The bread itself had a decent flavor and chararound the ouside, but was soggy through probably 75 percent of it from some sort of vinaigrette. The falafel was okay, fairly light, but were a little sparse and seemed to be mostly made up of the fried outside. There was not much of the light, fluffy interior that I enjoy in a falafel. Lastly, the arugula was something that I did not enjoy at all. There was a fair amount of it, and I think that the dish would have been much better served removing whatever the bread was sopping up and using it to dress the arugula.

I didn’t save this dish  for last, but it was far and away the one I enjoyed the most. The veal heart was served with braised escarole, house made guanciale (an unsmoked salted and cured meat, usually made from pig’s jowls or cheeks), and a soft egg. Everything here made sense to me. The escarole was well cooked, the soft egg oozed a bright yellow yolk when you broke through it, and the guanciale provided a salty contrast (although it was diced small and could easily go unnoticed). The veal was fantastic. It was cooked perfectly, on the rare side of medium rare in order to maintain it’s tenderness. It certainly did that. The five slices of heart were a meaty pinkish-red in the center and were well seasoned to bring out the flavor of the meat. I would certainly go back  and have this dish again, recommending it to anyone who makes it there while it is still on the menu.

Overall, I had a good time. It was fun to go experience this with family and a good friend. I very much appreciate what they are trying to do here as well. Their menu changes often according to what they have, and producing consistent dishes with a changing menu is much more difficult to do than dishing out the same dished night after night. The chef here clearly is looking to work creatively, and that is part of what makes eating at a place like this exciting, even if not every dish comes out perfectly.

10/28/2009

Vermont Pub and Brewery in Burlington, VT

I have not eaten here, but they have a big menu and I have heard that the food is decent pub stuff. I came here and tried a sample of six beers for six dollars. I was very pleased. The beers are all distinct, and there should be something for everyone. Their smoked stout was great. I am a fan of a smoky flavor, and this certainly has it. Their Duyvil was also good. It has a sour apple flavor, not like you are drinking cider, but it is definitely there. They have a very fruity beer, a Hoegaarden-esque beer that was probably my least favorite but my friend’s top choice, and I had a sweet and sour beer that was certainly that, and pretty enjoyable too. The waitress was a little absent, and forgot to put in the food order my friend made. Otherwise, this was a great place to go get some interesting and unique microbrews, and because of this, I am not opposed to trying out some food the next time I go.

08/18/2009