Tuesday, April 28, 2009

George

For George it’s all about balance. You can see it in his distinct black and white coat he sports everyday. You can see it in the way he moves from bed to bed. first his then She Shes then Browns. You can see it in the way he pees and marks the yard. He so badly wants the balance right that he has peed everywhere in the backyard. Not one spot has not been peed on by George. Most spots many, many times. You can see it in the way he jumps on you and gets your cloths dirty and jumps on you again to get the other part of cloths dirty. As you can see below for George it’s all about balance.

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Sunday, April 26, 2009

VALENZA

We had never heard of the restaurant Valenza and Stacey didn’t know she had a distant cousin who was the chef at Valenza. Click on it and read about it.

We went the other night. It was Stacey and me and her sister and her BF. They were on their way from somewhere to somewhere else and had to go through Atl…and bla… bla… bla…

So Stacey makes RSVP for the four of us at Valenza and we had no idea what to expect. The last time I was in this situation it all turned out great. This time was the same.
The young lady who seated us asked which one of us was Matt’s cousin, both Stacey and her sister Sam spoke up.
Next thing ya know he, Matt the Chef, is at the table, he is serving a plate of cured meats along with some great cheese, bread that had been grilled, tomato’s that he made a jam from and some olives. All very, very good.

After he introduced himself and we all said hello, Matt ask if we wanted to order from the menu or if we wanted him to cook for us. Well, when the chef ask if “you want me to cook for you” it’s a no brainer.

After that plate they just kept coming. He sent out grilled calamari along with mussels in a white wine sauce.

Next we enjoyed scallops that had been grilled to perfection. Followed by homemade ravioli. This was one of the best dishes of the night. Two different fillings - one pork and one with butternut squash. Both busted wide open with brown butter, sage and pecans.

Rabbit on polenta with kalamata olives did not suck either.

He brought us three different desserts and like everything else that night - they were awesome. Matt came to the table and had a couple of beer and we tried to figure out how we were related.

It was great to meet a new relative and we look forward to feasting at his restaurant again. Soon.

chow

Monday, April 20, 2009

PIGS FISH AND BEDS

Some of my latest creations, all available at your local SOSOSOUTHERN retail store.

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Friday, April 10, 2009

Goodmorning New Orleans

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I have fallen in love with the place and to say “place” when talking about New Orleans is a mouth full. Cause that’s what it is all about “place”. And what makes “place” is a gumbo, pun intended, of people, food, drink, history, ect. I could go on and on when it comes to New Orleans and it sense of “place”.

To get an idea of what I’m talking about try doing this. Each morning when you go to your computer, or whenever you go to your computer to read the news paper or check out CNN or whatever it is you like to check out regularly on the Internet, start going to this site. I do almost every morning and I always find a good read. And being that it is the Food and Dining section of the Times Picayune I never find bad news. Give it a try and see if you don’t long to jump on an airplane just to go try a new restaurant or try the latest cocktail you just read about.

Thursday, April 9, 2009

Peachtree Road Market opens for new season

Saturday was a beautiful day. The weather was great and it was the opening day of the Peachtree Road Market. The Peachtree Road Market is a food lovers dream come true. I was reading a post on another blog this a.m. about how good the Peachtree Road Market is and at the end someone posted a comment saying they liked to get 20 bucks from the ATM machine and spend it all at the Peachtree Road Market. I’m thinking that would only tease me, $20 bucks? are you kidding me. Hell Stacey spends that with one vendor.

Let me lay it out for you.

Bess is there and she owns Antico Mrecante. They sell some of the best cheese in the world. Bess has Italian cheese and she has cheese from Sweet Grass Dairy. If you don’t know Sweet Grass click on them and learn. The number of cheeses Bess sells are too many for me to write about, but off the top of my head the dolce Gorgonzola we got was excellent. The Tomini with herbs and pepper on top is excellent. Of course her Parmigiano is great. She has lot’s more and she has a retail shop. She shares a space with Via Elisa Pasta. Once again, if you don’t know about Via Elisa click on them and learn. The best fresh pasta in Atlanta. The best restaurants and Whole Foods use her products. It is available at the Peachtree Road Market every Saturday morning.

You can also stock up on fresh, as in made early each Saturday morning according to their signage, salsas, tortillas, guacamole and other Mexican specialties. Zocalo, a popular midtown restaurant is selling there product at the Peachtree Road Market again this year.

Hopes Garden sells Pesto. It is delicious. One is a regular pesto and one with jalapeno. Hopes Garden is a Mom Pop Daughter operation. Hope being the daughter, I bet she is about 13 years old. Click on them to learn more about them.

There are also many farmers at each market and lots of other vendors. Next week I will write about some of the other great products you can get there each Saturday morning. But my point is how great it is to go to one spot and get some of the best food in town. We always go home with an ice chest full. We go often because I sell my art and some furniture along side all these wonderful vendors. Like I said stay tune for more info about the Peachtree Road Market, but in the mean time I will see you there this Saturday.

BEAUTIFUL POBOY

If you go to Washington Rd. Seafood in East Point, Ga. this is what you can get for $4.29, tax included. Call me and I’ll meet you there.

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Sydnee and Jameys Excellent Crawfish Boil

We have been getting to know our neighbors Sydnee and Jamey the last year or so. Really nice people and serious about their food. Serious about their beer as well. Anyway I’m gonna let these photos of last weeks Crawfish Boil tell the story.
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Friday, April 3, 2009

DAY THREE NOLA

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We wake from our food coma thinking about where we will eat today. It is our last day in the city for this visit and we think we have picked out a really good restaurant. Rio Mar. We have read about and the bar tender at Cafe Adelaide said he liked it a lot. We start with coffee around the corner and then head into the Quarter. We are looking for a book store and the Nepoleon House.

We get to the Quarter and right away find a book store. It’s a classic. Tons of books written by southerners or about the south. New and old. We spend about an hour looking around and get a few books. We then head to the corner of Charters and St Louis streets.

The Napoleon House is a famous bar and cafe and Napoleon never stepped foot in the building. He was supposed to hold up there at one time , but never made it. It is one of the most beautiful buildings I have ever been in. It is and has been in the perfect state of decay for as long as I can remember. I first went there about 30 years ago and nothings changed. Tourist flock there , but that doesn’t stop the locals form coming as well. You got to have a Pimm’s Cup when you go and the food is good. Click on Pimm’s Cup to read about it. It is the only cocktail I’ve ever had that uses a slice of cucumber for a garnish. The muffaletta is very good also. We had a Pimm’s cup and then head out to lunch. We plan to sit for a hour or so and eat Spanish and Latin American Tapas.

So that’s what we do. We order a nice crisp white wine from the Basque region of Spain to match with dishes like ceviche, grilled Octopus, Oysters baked with chorizo & spinach, you get the idea. Maybe it’s because we make good ceviche at home or maybe it’s because we have had most of these dishes in it’s native land, but we’re just not that impressed. It’s not bad, but it’s not blowing us away like most all our other meals in NOLA have. No big deal. Can’t complain, what?, six great meals and one ok meal. I can live with that.
And with that being said, we can’t wait to get back to New Orleans, hope it’s not a whole year before we do so.

Thursday, April 2, 2009

THE PIG CHEF AND HIS NEW BOOK

Found this in the New Orleans news paper. I did a fund raiser for the Southern Foodways Alliance with Chef Link and got to talk with him some. Nice guy and very serious about his food. Stacey and I have also eaten at all three of his restaurants. Cochon and Butcher are the places to go. So go.

This month, look for Chef Donald Link’s new cookbook “Real Cajun: Rustic Home Cooking From Donald Link’s Louisiana” (Potter, $35).

Paging through his new cookbook with chef Donald Link is like looking at a family scrapbook, one with recipes and photographs that make you want to run into the kitchen and prepare the food.

“That’s Billy Link, ” Link says, pointing to a photo of one of his cousins, posing with the chef on a tarp-covered boat. Link’s favorite photo in the book is one of him dancing with his 9-year-old daughter, Cassidy.

Debuting this month, “Real Cajun: Rustic Home Cooking From Donald Link’s Louisiana” (Potter, $35) is about the chef’s big family and its profound influence, what he grew up eating, why he so loves the smell of rice cooking. Boudin, bacon and beer are constant themes.

It’s about much more than his New Orleans operations: Herbsaint, Cochon and Cochon Butcher. But after reading the book, it’s clear why Cochon and Cochon Butcher exist. Link’s love of pork and rice is in his DNA, he writes.

Link’s great-great-grandfather immigrated to Rayne with 40 other families from Geilenkirchen, Germany, in 1881, settling in Robert’s Cove. He is credited with being the first person to ship rice to New Orleans. The family brought recipes, still in use, for making sausage.


“Real Cajun: Rustic Home Cooking From Donald Link’s Louisiana” (Potter, $35) is about the chef’s big family and its profound influence, what he grew up eating, why he so loves the smell of rice cooking.

“Everybody, when they talk about Cajun food, they talk about the French and the zydeco music. But if you think about it, the Germans played a huge role in modern Cajun cuisine, with the rice farming, crawfish farming and sausage making, ” Link said last week.

“I’m on a mission to prove andouille is a German sausage, not French . . . The Germans brought over the sausage, and the French named it.”

Link’s grandparents lived in Sulphur. His mother’s parents were from Alabama originally, and his Granddad Adams, a Southern-style cook, was “a big influence here at Cochon, ” Link said.

His paternal grandmother “did pretty basic Cajun: smothered pork over rice, gumbo, rice dressing, anything with rice. Of course, they were rice farmers. And that Granddad was all over the place. He did everything. He was really my true inspiration for cooking, ” Link said.

“He’d go in the kitchen and make eight or nine things. He’d have a squirrel with the head on sitting on the table, everything he’d gathered over the week. Then the whole family would come over, 35 people, and he’d cook for everybody.

“I have just amazing memories of growing up in Louisiana with food.”

Link worked on the book with Paula Disbrowe, who also cowrote the very successful “Crescent City Cooking” with Link’s mentor, chef Susan Spicer. Clarkson Potter won the rights to publish the book after four or five publishers accepted their book proposal.

“We didn’t want to do a beautiful coffee-table food-shot cookbook, ” Link said. “For one, I don’t necessarily think that’s a good characterization of Louisiana food. It’s not necessarily a pretty, overstyled cuisine. It’s more that you’re outside sweating, cooking crawfish, drinking beer, dancing a little bit, going to festivals.

“That’s how I grew up, going to food festivals, hanging out under the carport, fishing on Big Lake and shrimping with my dad. That’s more what I wanted to convey. It’s not a restaurant cookbook.”

He fought to get to work with Chris Granger, the Times-Picayune photographer whose freelance work includes Spicer’s cookbook. Granger, who grew up in Lake Charles, traveled extensively with Link to the festivals, the sausage-making sessions, the crawfish boils and the family camp, where they made etouffee on the big covered patio while it was raining.

“This is J.W., ” Link said, pointing to a photo of cousin J.W. Zaunbrecher. He turned the page. “And this is one of J.W.’s pigs he trapped. Chris got in the cage with him” to take the photo.

The beady eyes of the feral pig stare out at the reader. Flip to the next page and there’s a close-up of homemade bacon.

“Writing this got me a lot more involved in that area and way of life, ” Link said. “I’ve always known about it, but I’ve never really hung out with them until I started writing the book: making sausage with them, going to crawfish boils, going dancing at Bubba Frey’s, ” his cousin who owns the Mowata General Store.

“It’s been an amazing experience to connect with somebody like that. He’s got this little store. He raises guinea hens, has turtles in a bucket outside. He has a little garden. He just kind of does what he wants. My dad will talk about that. These people just live in their own world out there. I find it incredibly fascinating.”

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Come to the Atl and have some pie!

A New York Expatriate’s Magnificent Obsession: Pizza

Jessica McGowan for The New York Times

CAUTION! Jeff Varasano makes blistered pizzas in Atlanta by disconnecting the safety latch on his oven’s cleaning cycle.

Jessica McGowan for The New York Times

JEFF VARASANO woke at 2:50 a.m. so he could get to his kitchen, measure precise quantities of water, flour, salt and yeast on a digital scale, and then mix them together. Sixteen hours later about 30 guests would be arriving, and they would want pizza.

Since moving from Manhattan to Atlanta in 1998, Mr. Varasano, a 42-year-old software engineer, has been looking for the kind of pizza he left behind in New York. Finding nothing close, he has spent much of the past decade trying to reverse-engineer what had been his favorite — from Patsy’s in East Harlem — in a home kitchen oven which, like nearly all consumer models, has a maximum cooking temperature roughly half of the 1,000 degrees pumped out by the coal-fired pizza oven at Patsy’s.

“I came to the conclusion pretty early on that their pies were cooking in 4 minutes and mine were cooking in 15 minutes,” making dense and chewy pizzas, he said. “And so I just went on this quest for more heat.”

He could, he thought, rewire the oven’s internal thermometer to switch hot signals for cold ones. “I started to think I was going to burn the house down with these tricks,” he said, “and then I came upon this idea of running it on the cleaning cycle.”

That epiphany, four years ago, allowed Mr. Varasano to finally produce a pizza as good as he would get in New York. He took a photo of that pie and posted an account, with mad-scientist specificity, of his six years of experiments with flours, mixing techniques, yeast cultures, canned tomatoes, cheeses and oven temperatures.

He has continued to make updates to the single-page Web site, slice.seriouseats.com/jvpizza, as he has turned his attention to different aspects of pie theory. The post is now less pizza recipe than the ravings of a pizza madman, 20,000 words of obsessive text in something like the crude Web style of the late ’90s. It has made him, perhaps, the Internet’s foremost homemade pizza maven.

Many of Mr. Varasano’s guests would be meeting him for the first time, having stumbled upon his Web site in their own quests. After corresponding via e-mail about this type of flour or that brand of mixer, they found themselves invited to this latest in an endless series of “pizza tastings.”

Whether it would be a success depended on Mr. Varasano’s seriously abused oven.

Electric ovens, which are what Mr. Varasano uses, clean themselves by maxing out their heating elements and incinerating spilled food. To prevent injuries, nearly all have safety latches that engage during cleaning to prevent someone from opening the door to, say, insert or remove a pizza. Mr. Varasano overcame that obstacle by snipping the metal latch with garden shears.

Pointing the laser sight of his $250 Raytek infrared thermometer, he found the pizza stone on the center rack in his cul-de-sac home in Atlanta was as hot as a New York pizza oven.

“It’s not so much about heat as it is temperature differential,” he said as he peered into the top compartment of his double oven. The stone needs to be about 150 degrees cooler than the air in the top of the oven, he said, so the crust beneath the sauce can cook before the bottom burns.

Over the past few years, he has devised a jury-rigged system to regulate the temperature of an oven that must, by now, think itself spotless. To cool the stone, he places a baking sheet on top. In the cabinet above, a fan blows over a tray of ice and water to cool the oven’s electronic console.

In the steel floor of the lower oven, there is a jagged, dime-size hole, made when an errant piece of superheated topping melted through. One window pane in that oven’s door is shattered, destroyed after a drop of sauce fell onto it at high heat. There is a long list of wrecked equipment — two more oven windows, three mixers and food processors, one internal fan. The oven has been shorting fuses lately. It’s getting harder, Mr. Varasano said, to make up stories for the oven repair guys.

As guests arrive, he engaged his one functional oven, and prayed. There was, in the room, the feeling of a happening, a kind of speakeasy anticipation as the oven’s temperature climbed.

Mr. Varasano was visibly nervous. If the oven were to break (again), he would pan-fry the 28 balls of dough he had been nursing for the past 16 hours into sugar-coated doughnuts.

The first pizza, mozzarella with basil, slid in and then out again in under three minutes. Over the next three hours, a dozen different pies slid on and off of Mr. Varasano’s peel, including a surprising arugula with lemon juice, a terrific clam pizza and a pie with oregano, black pepper and an elusive tanginess (the source of which was kept secret).

The oven overheated and shut down three times, the last outage lasting long enough to prompt doughnuts. It’s possible that it may join the other casualties of pizza, but there is something noble about sacrificing an appliance for one’s art. On his Web site, Mr. Varasano tells would-be pizzaioli that he’s not recommending they use their ovens this way. “Use this section with caution,” it reads, “i.e. no lawyers please.”

That warning may not be necessary. Mr. Varasano said: “I would say that one of the two or three most common comments I get is ‘Dude, I’d love to do that with my oven, but my wife would kill me.’ All the time.”

Freed from such personal restraints, Mr. Varasano has followed pizza-making to an abnormal level of compulsion.

Today, Mr. Varasano is hoping to translate his latest obsession into something more, by opening a pizza restaurant in Atlanta, perhaps as early as this fall. Whether his passion will survive the nightly grind of the restaurant business remains to be seen.

Chris Bianco, another ex-New Yorker, whose Pizzeria Bianco in Phoenix is among the most acclaimed pizzerias in the country, said after reading the Web site that he could tell that Mr. Varasano was on the right track.

“I do like that he figured it out on his terms, and I honestly learned things the same way,” Mr. Bianco said. “I could train a monkey to make one good pizza, but I think it becomes an artisanal product when we are truly engaged in the process.”