July eats

Hambone and Spice are back from an incredible, restful, and fun vacation in Maine. On either side of that trip, we've grilled a ridiculous amount of delicious food—so much so that I haven't been able to keep up on the blog front. Better luck next month, heh? Here are some of the highlights from a fruitful July, including treats eaten on our trip.

Fusilli with Alaskan salmon, peas, and pesto cream (made from the basil growing in pots on our terrace).


House-cured gravlax that Will (brother-in-law visiting from Stockholm) and Helena (his wife) whipped up while in Maine. The leftover smoked salmon was tranformed stunningly into a pasta with peas and a cilantro-lime cream sauce.


Lobster roll with the perfect ratio of sweet meat to mayonnaise and a clam roll, at Lunts. Yes, that's a bottle of blueberry ale. When in Maine...


Four squares (clockwise from top left): roasted pebble-sized potatoes*; grilled lamb rib chops rubbed with cumin, coriander, cinnamon, allspice, s & p; Moroccan carrot salad with lemon, ginger, and spices (from Alice Waters' Art of Simple Food, which has been a staple chez H&S since it was published); grilled zucchini.

*all vegetables, courtesy of the St. Paul Farmers Market


And for dessert, cherry sorbet (from David Lebovitz's Perfect Scoop, another staple). True confession: a pit found its way, accidentally, sadly, into this batch of sorbet. My super-duper Waring blender made quick work of the stone, resulting in a minefield of a dessert. I highly recommend making a batch of this exquisite sorbet, and taking great care when the cherries are processed.

on vacation

Tomorrow morning, Hambone and Spice—and their brood—are flying to Maine for a week. We hope to have quality family time that includes seeing siblings/in-laws and cousins, as well as eating our fair share of lobsters and blueberries. As I will be without a computer while away—horrors, I know—details about my trip will have to wait until my return.

Ciao!

puttanesca penne with salmon

I’m terrible with leftovers. Generally speaking, I don’t like reheating food in a microwave. I find it always takes longer than I plan to warm food in the oven or on the stovetop so what comes to table is often cold in the middle. Granted, there are more than a few hearty one-pot wonders that make a nice lunch days after you’ve had the initial meal. Soups, stews, and thick-sauced pastas come to mind. I would never reject leftover Indian curries or Chinese take-out. These are the easy leftovers.

I hate wasting food and am loathe to throw out any that remains from a meal, which begs the questions: what, besides sandwiches, do you do with extra meat?

As I was planning the menu for the week, I took a peek into the fridge to see what raw materials I might have at my disposal. We entertained quite a bit over the previous weekend and had to creatively reorganize the fridge to accommodate extra groceries so I felt like I might have a lot of options.

The vegetable crisper was playing host to a zippered plastic bag with roughly half a pound of cooked penne. My first thought was to recreate the Bolognese sauce Anne Burrell made on her pilot Food Network show, but I haven’t actually watched the episode. Besides, when the temperature is hovering above 80 degrees, a heavy meaty pasta sauce is not what I want to eat. Grilled vegetables and pesto were briefly considered, then rejected because I couldn’t find a way to make them appealing to the junior set.

Then, I stumbled upon the container boasting nearly half a pound of grilled spice-rubbed Copper River salmon, leftover from earlier in the week. A quick internet search gave me the inspiration I needed to transform the penne and salmon leftovers into a wholly new—and delicious—dish. Inspired by a puttanesca sauce, I substituted salmon for anchovies, allowing the salmon to be warmed gently in a simmering olive-caper-garlic-laden tomato sauce.

I look forward to the occasion on which I am, again, blessed with extra salmon.

puttanesca penne with salmon
2 T. olive oil, plus a measure for finishing
3 cloves garlic, sliced
1 (15 oz.) can whole tomatoes, chopped, liquid reserved
1/3 cup kalamata olives, chopped
3 T. capers
a generous pinch of red pepper flakes
1 T. tomato paste
salt and pepper
1/2 pound cooked pasta, room temperature
1/2 pound cooked salmon, crumbled
a few fresh basil leaves, chiffonade

Heat olive oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. Sauté sliced garlic in the olive oil briefly, until just turning golden. Add tomatoes, olives, capers, and red pepper flakes. Turn heat down to medium and allow to simmer for five minutes, occasionally breaking up tomato pieces. Stir in the reserved tomato juice and tomato paste. Taste sauce and season with salt, if necessary. Incorporate cooked salmon into sauce, then add cooked pasta and toss to coat. Heat gently until salmon is warmed through. Plate and drizzle with good-quality olive oil. Garnish with basil ribbons.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY! M.F.K. Fisher

Few would argue against the wide-held belief that M.F.K. Fisher was the greatest food writer or that she effectively established the culinary essay as a genre.

I first encountered M.F.K. Fisher in 1989, while working as a professional bookseller. The bookstore where I was employed gave me a section to maintain: cookbooks. My first thought was that the assignment was a serious mistake—I didn't cook. Why should I be expected to become an expert on cookbooks if I didn't use them?

I'm here to tell you that, in any self-respecting independent bookstore, there's more to the cooking section than cookbooks. So I didn't cook, but I did love to eat, and the culinary essay subsection whetted my appetite for any author with the sort of descriptive powers to make me feel like I was eating a fine meal. Enter M.F.K. Fisher.

Shortly after a trip to Burgundy in 1998, I lost myself in Long Ago in France, her memoir of living in Dijon, which took me right back to the France I had just visited. Still I had not read her food writing, despite owning most of it. For years, The Art of Eating, the massive multiwork volume of M.F.K. Fisher's early food writing, has been taunting from the foodie shelves of my personal library. This morning, in honor of Fisher's birthday, I pulled down AoE and dipped into Consider the Oyster (1941):

There are three kinds of oyster-eaters: those loose-minded sports who will eat anything, hot, cold, thin, thick, dead or alive, as long as it is oyster; those who will eat them raw and only raw; and those who with equal severity will eat them cooked and no way other.

and

There are several things to do with oysters beside eat them, although many people believe firmly in that as the most sensible course.

I'm hooked on her lavish descriptions of food, her presentation of the social, historical, cultural, and political aspects of food, as well as her personal experiences and observations.

Here is Garrison Keillor's very brief tribute from "The Writers Almanac":

It's the birthday of food writer M.F.K. Fisher, (books by this author) born Mary Frances Kennedy in Albion, Michigan (1908). She's the author of many books about food and eating, and best known for The Gastronomical Me (1943). During World War II, she published How to Cook a Wolf (1942), which suggested all kinds of ways people could eat well on food rations. She wrote, "When the wolf is at the door one should invite him in and have him for dinner.

You can read more about M.F.K. Fisher here and here, as well as at the Chicago Tribune, which offers a fitting tribute on her 100th birthday.

Kebab of the Week: Refrigerator Raid

This week’s kebabs were born, basically and simply, out of a lesson in frugality. It’s only midweek but it has been a busy week, and I didn’t feel like thinking about the optimal meat/vegetable combination for our skewers, nor did I want to put much effort into researching the most delicious imaginable marinade.

Clearing out our full-to-bursting refrigerator is always a priority so I raided the veggie bin, hoping it would turn up some serviceable goods. What good luck to find yellow summer squash, a yellow bell pepper, and a red onion. Roughly one-inch chunks of these vegetables were threaded loosely on skewers with same-size pieces of chicken breast that had been marinated briefly in white wine (the last three fingers from the previous night’s dinner), olive oil, fresh thyme, and salt and pepper.

While Hambone manned the grill I made some rice and a batch of chimichurri, rescuing a head of parsley and dregs of cilantro.

reading: Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper

Recently I finished reading Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper, British food writer Fuchsia Dunlop’s delectable memoir of eating in China. The Guardian called this book a “cultural immersion,” which is apt, as the memoir entails much more than food.

Beginning in the early 1990s, Dunlop lived in China, off and on, for over a decade. As a student—and as a professional writer—she has traveled to remote corners of the country, engaging every person she could in conversation. That rich experience certainly imbues her writing with great depth. Between descriptions of food and meals, Dunlop dazzles with history, geography, modernization, growth, and more.

In the early 1990s, Dunlop lands in Chengdu in Sichuan province—the area recently devastated by earthquakes—where she researched Chinese policy on ethnic minorities. She falls for street food, as well as the incendiary food of Sichuan province and the snout to tail eating of China. When her visa expires, she enrolls in a professional training school for chefs, as the only Western student and one of three women.

As a student of Sichuan cookery, Dunlop learned about mastering the arts of flavor, starting with fu he wei, the complex flavors. Sichuan cuisine boasts twenty-three official complex flavors, one of which is “home-style”—salty, savory, and a little hot. In her travels, she had an opportunity to challenge her culinary comfort zone by eating a lot of truly exotic foods, including civet cats, goose intestines, and more. The chapter on food textures and mouth-feel—an integral part of Chinese cooking—is eye opening.

All is not delicious. Dunlop explores the SARS health crises, which temporarily put a damper on eating in restaurants, where the risk of disease transmittal was high, especially with such practices as “public” chopsticks. She also looks at other issues, such as food safety (use of toxic food additives is rampant) and the controversial consumption of endangered species (shark’s fin and bear paws, to name a few).
In addition to Shark's Fin, Dunlop has written two authoritative cookbooks, one of which—Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook—was nominated for a James Beard Award (Asian Cooking) this year.

If you’re interested in China, food, or travel—or if you simply appreciate sparkling prose—this book is for you.

nibbles

~ The redesigned website for City Pages, the Twin Cities alternative weekly, is live. Best part—the food blog, Twin Cities Eater, is more prominent and more attractive. I encourage you to check it out. Also, Rachel Hutton reviews Obento-Ya this week. Must. Eat. There. Soon.

~ Fueling my summer passion, the Pioneer Press (by way of syndication) offers kebab recipes.

~ At the Star Tribune, Rick Nelson interviews Catherine Friend, the Zumbrota (MN) author of The Compassionate Carnivore, a meat-lover’s handbook to eating local (no matter where you live).
~ 2008 James Beard Award winners have been announced. None of our outstanding Minneapolis chefs (Isaac Becker of 112 Eatery, Tim McKee of La Belle Vie, and Alex Roberts of Alma and Brasa) won in the Best Chef Midwest category. Still I’ve thoroughly enjoyed re-reading the list of nominees, adding restaurants and cookbooks to my lengthy to-do lists. Dara weighs in on the awards with an insider's perspective.

Kebab of the Week: Barefoot Contessa's lamb kebabs

Kebabs are summer’s perfect one-dish meal. There’s nothing easier than skewering succulent chunks of meat and jewel-toned vegetables (or just vegetables, if you’re so inclined) on a stick. Few foods are quicker to prepare and cook. Typically, about five minutes of cooking time on the first side, then a flip of the skewer for five more minutes; less time if you’re using fish or seafood. Plus, there are infinite combinations of skewerables, which keeps the summer menu lively.

We’ve had best results when meat can be marinated overnight, though any amount of time will do. A quick brushing of a high-quality oil and a liberal sprinkling of salt and pepper can coax great flavor out of meat and vegetables, too.

This year for Mother's Day, oldest son Alpha thoughtfully gave me a copy of Ina Garten’s Barefoot Contessa at Home because he knows I enjoy watching her show. As we were flipping through the gorgeously illustrated cookbook, the lamb kebabs caught our eye. Two nights ago we seized the opportunity to make the red wine vinaigrette in order to marinate the lamb, and last night we grilled. The meat was tender and flavorful, enhanced by bathing in marinade. I cannot wait until lamb comes into the kebab rotation again. Garten's recipe includes a side sauce—stock, lemon juice, olive oil, and a pinch of rosemary, quickly brought to a boil and reduced—which we ran out of time to make. We may try it in the future, but we didn’t miss it this time round.

Lamb Kebabs
adapted from Barefoot Contessa at Home

1-1/2 pounds top round lamb
2-3 garlic cloves, minced
1 T fresh rosemary, minced
1 T fresh oregano, minced
olive oil
1/4 cup dry red wine
2 T red wine vinegar
salt and pepper
red onion, cut into 1 to 2-inch pieces
cherry tomatoes

Cut the lamb into 1-1/2-inch cubes. Place cubes in a large zippered plastic bag. Make marinade by combing garlic, rosemary, oregano, 1/4 cup olive oil, red wine, vinegar, and salt (to taste). Cover lamb with marinade, and refrigerate overnight.

Heat and prepare grill, per your custom.

Loosely thread lamb on skewer, alternating every few cubes with onion pieces. Thread the cherry tomatoes on skewers. Brush with olive oil. Season both sets of skewers with salt and pepper. Place the lamb skewers on the hot grill. After 5 minutes, turn the lamb. Add the tomato skewers to the grill for five minutes.

Serve the skewers on a bed of couscous or rice.

love clancey's

The last time I visited Clancey's, the Linden Hills meat and fish market, I signed up for their e-mail list. Now, I love Clancey's for many reasons, chief among them: it's a small, independent business; the owners are friendly and interested in how you're going to use the goods they've just sold to you; the meat is of the highest quality, as local as possible; the store is dog-friendly (I don't have a dog, but I get a kick out of watching the owners sneak ground beef to visiting dogs). The house-made sausages are to die for!

But who needs more e-mail clogging up the ether? I guess I do if it arrives each week with flair.

it’s in the air, and

it’s almost a summer wind;

warm enough to garden in the rain,

ideal for added heat from the grill…

so come to clancey’s:

we’ve got lamb (all cuts) and a killer garlic & yogurt marinade

we’ve got all cuts of beef (try our kebabs), chicken (try it on the grill, halved & under a brick), pork (smoke some), halibut cheeks (yum),

all kinds of sausages (that beef, blue cheese & cherry

w/ surly bender is pretty special);

invite some warmth into the weekend, some friends & neighbors into your backyard and welcome some significant change:

in the weather, in the wind, in the overall climate of

everything that matters

buy good food

from good farmers

every tiny bit

makes a difference!

love clancey’s

I think even the coldest, cruelest Grinch heart would have to love Clancey's.

The New Luxury

Sometimes luxurious meals aren’t measured by the exclusivity or the expense of the ingredients. Truffles, Kobe beef, foie gras, caviar, Barolos immediately come to mind. Rather, some meals are luxurious because you’ve been granted the space and time to spread out and cook in as unhurried a manner as possible.

Saturdays are great for throwing multi-course dinner parties. Sundays are ideal for tinkering over a slow-cooked meal. Both allow an opportunity to crank the tunes and spend the afternoon carefully peeling and chopping, sautéing and braising ingredients.

Weeknights, however, call for quicker fare. Dinner cannot take longer than an hour to prepare: We’ve got school-age children who need to do homework and take showers, plus decompress, before bed. And, twice a week, we have to factor in Alpha’s soccer games and practices, as well as drive time, all of which cut into the dinner hour.

Imagine then, when one doesn’t have a game to work around, that the hour or so one has to make dinner suddenly seems like all the time in the world.



Tonight, Hambone fired up the grill while I whipped up a lime juice-soy sauce-ginger bath and set a nearly two-pound flank steak to marinate. We poured ourselves the last two glasses of Albarino and had an actual adult conversation. The boys did their parkour maneuvers, jumping off the terraces in our “backyard” patio. Then we all tucked into grilled steak (still trying to find the sweet spot between rare and medium rare, as shown above), new potatoes, asparagus from the farmers market, and a 2005 Desert Wind Ruah from the Columbia Valley (WA), and we talked about our day.

Luxurious—like rich, creamy foie gras and crisp vintage champagne.

Viva Las Vegas

The Amateur Gourmet isn’t the only food blogger whooping it up in Sin City this weekend. I’m also off to Vegas, to help a girlfriend celebrate a milestone birthday. It’s my first visit, and aside from neon and casinos, I don’t really know what to expect. I’m not a gambler but I am a keen observer. My flight lands at McCarran at 10:30 a.m., which gives me just enough time to get to the hotel and be poolside with a cocktail and a book by noon. The group has plans to see a show and dinner reservations at the Bellagio's FIX (not linking as Flash crapped up my laptop) on Saturday night, otherwise I’m keeping an open mind and stomach for culinary experiences.

Back Monday...

RIP: Irvine Robbins

I owe a debt of gratitude to Irvine Robbins, who gave me almost unfettered access to ice cream during my foodie formative years. The perfect scoop, in myriad flavors, never failed to give me ten minutes of pleasure in a sea of mediocrity. Coconut, black licorice, lemon drop, and Daiquiri ice were a few favorites.

The only bright spot in my hometown's crappy mall was a Baskin-Robbins. From the time purchasing power was bestowed upon me I always had just enough change in my pocket for a single scoop of something. Much to the chagrin of my friends, who always chose a sugar cone, my preferernce then (as it is now) was to eat ice cream with a spoon from a paper cup.

If the chain nature of Baskin-Robbins gets you on your artisanal high horse, just remember that a Baskin-Robbins ice-cream cone, perched in a cone holder, inspired Thomas Keller's signature salmon tartare "ice cream" cone.

Photo, as it appeared in the NYT, from Tony Korody/Sygma

H&S Restaurant Week: 112 Eatery

On the Monday night of H&S 3rd Annual Restaurant Week, we visited an old favorite: 112 Eatery. It had been awhile—over six months—since we’d last eaten here. The food had begun to seem predictable and a little heavy. But I was craving the ambience—exposed brick walls, warm lighting, shotgun-style layout. Another reason 112 was an inspired choice: executive chef/owner Isaac Becker had recently been nominated for the James Beard Foundations’ Best Chef: Midwest award. The strength of Becker’s menu lies in upscale but unpretentious food, such as blue prawns with rooster mayo, grilled lamb scottodito with goat’s milk yogurt, steak tartare, a Vietnamese-style duck pate banh mi, and more.

This snowy, windy, cold April evening invited the comfort of my all-time favorites.



To start, I ordered the radicchio and duck salad—crispy, bitter radicchio and supple, dreamy duck confit are each shredded and dressed with a miso vinaigrette and garnished with slices of hardboiled quail eggs and buttery breadcrumbs. The kitchen used to send this salad out in a cup, but the portion has recently grown to fill a bowl. I shouldn’t complain about getting more of a good thing, but the cup was more elegant and better suited to being a starter—i.e., piquing the appetite rather than serving as a small meal.



Hambone took the white anchovy crostini with avocado, as beautiful and delicious as always.



My main was the stringozzi with lamb sugo—handcrafted, shoelace-thick pasta tangled in a rich, long-cooked sauce.



Also enamored by the pasta offerings, Hambone ordered the tagliatelle with foie gras meatballs. You heard correctly: Foie. Gras. Meatballs. The meatballs were so meltingly rich, the noodles seemed like a silly addition.

We shared the tres leche cake, to fortify ourselves for the treacherous drive back to Saint Paul. Wink, wink.

Chef Becker and 112 Eatery still deserve the accolades. Occasionally I feel as if we’ve eaten everything that interests us on the seldom-changing menu. Then I’ll take a closer look to see that there is an entire section I’m missing—the tweaked bar food, which includes the 112 cheeseburger with Brie, the bacon egg harissa sandwich, the gougère and fried mortadella sandwich, Chinese eggs, and, well, that should keep us busy for awhile.

H&S Third Annual Restaurant Week: An Amuse Bouche

In early April, Alpha and Beta spent their spring break at Grandpa and Grandma’s house in South Dakota. While they were away, Hambone and Spice imposed a restaurant week upon ourselves—an extraordinary treat with no need to pay a sitter ($10/hour is the going rate in these parts) or mind the sitter’s curfew. We dined out each night, in as leisurely a fashion as possible, and were able to snag a table wherever we chose, making the Cities’ hottest reservations more attainable.

Since Hambone and Spice have been on a tear lately, ticking off line items on our list of the newest and/or most popular Twin Cities’ restaurants, we decided to address our cravings and revisit our favorite restaurants. Herewith, a teaser (sorry, no photos):

La Cucaracha
After handing over the boys to Gpa and Gma, Hambone and Spice made a beeline to the Mexican restaurant nearest our house. As we pulled into La Cucaracha’s “parking lot,” we tried to recall when we ate here last. It had been a long time—late August 2006—and we had such a disappointing meal, convincing me that the end had finally come to decent Mexican food in St. Paul.

Serving solid Mexican fare—enchiladas, burritos, tacos, margaritas, and cervezas—La Cucaracha is a St. Paul institution. Hambone and I have been eating here for a long time. We'd started dating when we were each just out of college, biding time at trivial jobs during the first Bush recession, which left us plenty of time to have existential conversations at the coffeehouse. Spending $10 on an entree and $1.50 for a cervesa at La Cucaracha would have signaled a splurge.

The menu, which hasn’t changed much in twenty years (though, yes, inflation has driven up the prices slightly), still holds a few go-to items for me. Dishes such as Gina’s Yucatan tostadas—corn tortillas layered with savory black beans, sprinkled with tangy feta cheese and crisp onion slices, then garnished with creamy avocado slices—are pure heaven to me. That said, there is only one way to start a meal at La Cuc—warm, salty queso dip, slathered on homemade tortilla chips and chased by large, sweet margaritas. On this visit, I tried an item I've never before ordered: the pork guisado burrito with tomatillo sauce. Perfect in its porkiness, brightened by the salsa verde, this burrito has quickly catapulted up my list of favorites at La Cucaracha.

The decision to eat at La Cucaracha was spontaneous. I didn't have my camera with me. I didn't pull out my notebook to capture the subtleties of the meal, the ambience, or the service. And what I took away from the experience was a reminder that La Cucaracha remains a lively, comfortable restaurant, serving delicious, uncomplicated food. My faith has been restored, and I look forward to returning with Alpha and Beta.

local food writing roundup

Dear Dara reports that, like D'Amico & Son's family-friendly Sunday dinners, the Parasole Group has rolled out an $8.95-a-person, kids-eat-free Sunday supper at three of their restaurants: Salut Bar Américain in Edina, Pittsburgh Blue in Maple Grove, and Figlio. Works for me, as the Grand Avenue location of Salut opens in June!

Also, check out Dara's eloquent review of The Strip Club. She's spot-on about the duck, and I couldn't have said it better myself.

At City Pages, Rachel Hutton has a delightful look at Lynne Rossetto Kasper's new book, How to Eat Supper.

At the Star Tribune, fourteen local restaurants join the tap water brigade and Rick Nelson profiles local CSAs.

Saga Hill Cooking School

Marianne Miller, the former executive chef at Bobino and Red whom I recently learned about on Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl's blog, sent me an e-mail, with encouragement to check out the April schedule for Saga Hill Cooking School, which she runs in Wayzata.

Now you have to go check it out, too, because what Miller is doing is very interesting and smart. This is not your mother's cooking school. One of the coolest things SHCS offers is corporate team building through cooking. Sessions include a wine and cheese tasting and a timed, Iron Chef-style competition, which sure beats a relay race of coworkers waddling down a beach with an inflatable between their legs. The April schedule includes a mother-daughter high tea, a kitchen basics class targeted to girlfriends (clever and timely), a class featuring French wine and cheese pairings, and a class celebrating the eight hottest ingredients for 2008.

I've taken a few cooking classes around town, and while they've generally been good, a certain element of fun is missing. Participants are quiet. Instructors often seem like they just want to get through the long list of things they're hoping to teach you. Miller's innovative cooking school clearly puts fun and camaraderie at the heart of learning.

Alpha and Beta, if you're looking to give something to someone who has everything—your mother, for instance—consider the gift of a cooking class. Let me be less subtle: I'd love to take a cooking class from Marianne Miller in that beautiful space overlooking Lake Minnetonka.

~
Saga Hill Cooking School
307 East Lake Street
Wayzata, Minnesota 55391

back in the saddle

It’s 10 p.m., and our house still smells really amazing. Rich, meaty, warm. Here in St. Paul, we had our first rainy day of spring, and I took an opportunity to braise some meat. I had two very pink veal shanks, each weighing in around a pound. They were dredged in flour that had been seasoned with s & p, and then browned on all sides in a few glugs of olive oil and butter. When the shanks had reached a golden caramel color, I removed them from the Dutch oven and added the aromatics—chopped onion, carrot, and celery, parsley, bay leaves, and thick strips of lemon peel.

After the vegetables had softened, I made little nests for the shanks and added them back to the pot, covering the mixture with a bottle of cabernet sauvignon and setting to simmer for half an hour. Beef broth, hand-crushed whole tomatoes, and salt and pepper went into the pot before it was covered with a lid and placed in the oven at 375 degrees for an hour and a half. The lid was removed and the shanks remained in the oven for another thirty minutes, during which time I made a gremolata* (toasted pine nuts, garlic, an anchovy filet, orange zest, and parsley) and Alpha made perfectly creamy mashed potatoes.

While the veal shanks were doing in the oven, Hambone and I watched the Tour of Flanders, a one-day cycling race set against a backdrop of falling snow and slick cobbled hills. But mostly we participated in aromatherapy, breathing deeply the scents wafting from the kitchen. It felt so good to be cooking again after more than a week of eating in restaurants.**

As for the osso buco, I shredded the meat from the bone to make serving four people easier and to appease two children who were a little uncertain about the large bones and the rustic sauce. The mashed potatoes were a great vehicle for the silky meat and the delicious gravy, which positively glistened. And, we drank an outstanding 2003 St. Emilion from Chateau Gaillard. Still, Hambone and I concurred that for the expense and the reputation of veal shanks, they should be better, less scary. Even after nearly three hours of cooking, the veal shanks still exhibited a fair amount of connective tissue, which I did my best to remove. But fat is fat—and it wasn’t great.

I’d like to eat osso buco in a restaurant, where I imagine the dish would be a little more refined, but I’m not likely to make them at home again. Pork shanks and lamb shanks, however, may get a nod.

*I loved the gremolata. The little bit leftover will garnish another meal this coming week.

**The kids were at my parents’ for spring break and while they were away, Hambone and I partook in our third annual restaurant week. More to come.

local food writing roundup

Rachel Hutton reports on Pan-Asian Otho in City Pages: The first fine-dining restaurant in a gentrifying neighborhood has its share of hits and misses.

Dear Dara has the best news I've heard this week. She says that spring starts this Friday—because that’s when Sea Salt, the wonderful seafood restaurant in the Minnehaha Falls Park Pavilion, will open. Hambone and Spice and their offspring had some of their best meals of 2007 at Sea Salt. And, some of their best memories as it's where Alpha fell in love with calamari, tentacles and all. Forget about all the fancy and hip restaurants where we've dined this week, just give me Sea Salt. Oh, happy day!

Eating out: Heidi's

Hambone and I recently ate at Heidi’s, Stewart Woodman’s new south Minneapolis restaurant. A few years ago, we had a really memorable meal at Woodman’s last restaurant, Five—housed in the former Fifth Precinct building in Minneapolis. I still dream of the “Bhopal style” lamb loin in yogurt-cilantro sauce, essentially a deconstructed but refined Indian “curry,” as well as the lemon crème brulee with candied pink peppercorns, one of the most unusual and refreshing desserts I have eaten in a Twin Cities restaurant. With our coffee, the chef sent out house-made mini donuts, an homage to the building’s origins as a police station.

No sooner had Hambone and I vowed to return than Woodman was bought out by his partners and shown the door. The restaurant closed soon after as part of the Great Restaurant Massacre of 2007, which has been detailed by others, so no need to dwell. Good news: Stewart Woodman is back with Heidi’s.

The restaurant, named after Woodman’s wife (who is also the pastry chef), occupies a tiny space in south Minneapolis (next to the [also] very hot Blackbird). To say it’s a jewel box would seem a little clichéd, and nothing about Heidi’s is clichéd.

The concise seasonal menu offered approximately eight appetizers, eight entrees, and a handful of sides, including such items as stewed mustard greens and buttered papparadelle. The wine list boasted intriguing bottles in a range of prices, some under $30, as well as a handful available by the glass. The dessert list featured the gamut from creamy (“dreamsicle” crème brulée) to chocolate (cake), with fruit in between. There’s even a cheese trolly [sic] ($17 for a "selection") for those who don’t require a sweet to end the meal.

For the sake of not making a circus out of our meal, I left my camera at home, so you’ll have to trust that every dish was gorgeously presented.

We shared this wonderful meal with friends, Tracy and Bill.

To start, I took the warm fingerling potato and raclette salad with leeks, mustard sauce, cornichons, while Hambone ordered crepe with foie gras, curried Beluga black lentils, hibiscus syrup, which I didn’t try but trust was delicious from Hambone’s discrete groans. I wish I had brought my camera if for no other reason than to document the exquisite presentation of Tracy’s butter lettuce salad. The leaves of which were removed and arranged to resemble a flower. Bill’s crab spring rolls were garnished with jalapeno “jelly beans,” a nod to molecular gastronomy. We drank a Gruner Veltliner (Anton Bauer Gmork ’06), which paired nicely with all entrees, but especially well with my potato "salad."

Each main course was stunning. My off-menu lobster in a parsnip puree and ginger emulsion, offered unique flavors and textures that were at once innovative and comforting. Hambone’s sautéed Australian sea bass was perfectly prepared, the flesh fluffy and soft between a nice pan-seared crust. Tracy’s homemade ravioli stuffed with beets, goat cheese and chives were singular though. The wrapper was whisper thin and held a beet slice, which was surprising as we all imagined the ravioli filling would be a puree. The truffle foam surrounding the ravioli felt essential, not gimmicky in the least. Bill’s anise-scented lamb shank on a wild rice salad was priced cheekily at $17.76. With our mains, we drank a well-balanced and flexible French pinot noir (Domaine Joseph Drouhin “Laforet”, ’05).

I’m looking forward to returning so I may order my own portion of lamb shank or the grilled lemon fish on stewed mustard greens in a bacon fumet. Bacon fumet, say no more.

The table shared an outstanding chocolate dessert—in fact, the best chocolate dessert I’ve had in an MSP restaurant, in a long time. This flourless chocolate cake had a dreamy, boozey finish. A quenelle of luscious espresso ice cream on the side was unnecessary but much appreciated.

The only misstep in the evening was the thirty minute wait for our reservation. Even though we were twenty minutes late, our table wasn’t ready for us. The front of house was backed up, packed with a couple four-tops waiting to be seated. You can do the math. I know that Heidi’s has been booked solid practically since the restaurant opened last fall—because the food is amazing. Kudos! But there is no bar and no comfortable sitting—or standing—area in which to wait for your table. The Woodmans absolutely have to figure out how to handle reservations or the effect of small, charming, and exclusive is totally ruined, and the food may not be worth the inconvenience.

That said, I will be back as soon as I can secure another reservation!

delivered

My Rancho Gordo order arrived today. I can't wait to curl up with my cookbooks and research recipes for the giant limas, marrow beans, and eye of the goat.