If you want to point out grammatical errors, typos, and blatant omissions, or if you’d just like to drop me a note and say hello, or if you want to throw out an idea for a future column so I don’t have to sit around and scratch my head for a week, or if you actually cook a recipe and want to say how it came out, me. I would love to hear from everyone.

Maybe if your e-mail is offensive enough, we’ll put it up here.

The online archive of big Burrito Corporate Chef Bill Fuller's recipes and essays from 2006

January 2006

Big Burrito’s Bill Fuller gets cozy with old friends

So the holidays are over. The tree is in the alley, I’m waiting for a dry day to take the lights down outside, and credit card bills will come soon. January weather has taken over, rain and gray interspersed with snow and freezing temperatures. Time to hide out inside. This time of the year begs for comfort food - dishes that are old friends, meals that are warm, fulfilling, and familiar. For this month, I chose four old, dear friends from Casbah to present.

The Arugula Salad with Pancetta, Potatoes, Mushrooms, and Goat Cheese grew out of my desire to re-create the traditional spinach salad with a Casbah twist. The arugula replaces the spinach for a more complex peppery flavor, sautéed Cremini mushrooms fill the mushroom slot, and a lighter emulsified pancetta vinaigrette stands in for the usual gooey hot bacon dressing.

The Orecchiette Pasta with Sage, Cranberries, Grilled Chicken, and Goat Cheese started by accident. At the end of a long, busy night at Casbah, I walked onto the sauté station to throw together a little pasta for a post-service snack. There wasn’t much left on the station so I took some re-constituted dried cranberries from one dish, some grilled, sliced chicken from another, put them in a pan with some cream, heated it up, and finished with sage, goat cheese, and Orecchiette pasta. It was great. It filled that comfort void that is happily occupied in the American dining spectrum by Thanksgiving dinner and Fettuccini Alfredo. I liked it so much we ran it on the menu next week. People loved it.

The dish defies what people claim to be their eating preferences. Loaded with cream, it is a fat-hater’s nightmare. Pasta and cranberries are loaded with carbs. And don’t you know that people don’t like goat cheese in large amounts? It has continued to be a favorite through all the dieting crazes of the last nine years.

Pork Chop with Butternut Squash Risotto, Sage Cream, and Crispy Leeks. The beloved Pork Chop. Everybody loves the Pork Chop. A big, fat pork chop with a homey risotto, crispy fried leeks for crunch, and two rich sauces. If you don’t care to pursue the reduced veal stock, the garlic cream will be just fine. But if you like to cook, make the reduced veal stock, freeze it in ice cube trays, and use it from time to time for a great meat sauce or to add richness to stews and braises. Sautéed wild mushrooms finished with thyme, butter, and demi-glace is a great dish. Especially with some creamy polenta.

Finally, the Chocolate-Hazelnut Napoleon. Crispy, chocolate-y, nutty, but not too heavy, a great dessert for a cold night after a big meal.

Next month, another crop of recipes from my archive. Stay warm until then!

February 2006

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big Burrito’s Bill Fuller: Valentine what now?

Valentine’s Day, again. A fun day of the year for all romantic types to canoodle with their partners except for one small, specialized subset; those fortunate enough to be paired with a chef. The last Valentine’s day I did something romantic within a week of the date was probably sometime in high school. A word of caution to those that love the ever-irresistible, incredibly sexy, creative and brilliant kitchen types - Give up Valentine’s Day NOW. Make friends with some other chef-widows, have a party and watch back episodes of Lost, drink good wine, and commiserate.

But for those of you not lucky enough to have given your heart to a chef, and I am sorry that you are so unfortunate but there are only so many of us to go around, enjoy the day with your sweetie. Whether it is a romantic dinner at home, a night out without the kids, or a little trip somewhere hot and sandy, do it for us. We’ll be sweating it out in the kitchen, trying to remember if we actually bought the obligatory card and flowers or if we will be in trouble when we get home.

But if I were off, I would send the kids to the grandparents’ and make my wife a fabulous dinner. I’d even do the dishes. Here is what I’d make:

Grilled Oysters with Cream and Caviar

Champagne, Proseco, American Sparkling Wine (I like Cliquot)

Pan-roasted Veal Tenderloin with Lobster Ragout

Ponzi Pinot Noir

Chocolate Pots Du Crème with Raspberries with

Banfi Brachetto d’Acqui Rosa Regale (Blush sparkling wine that is great with chocolate)

If, however, I wasn’t a professional chef, I might be a little intimidated. But there are easier ways to go.

Flower Salad

Any Sparkling Wine

Roasted Salmon with Oven-dried and Tomatoes

Etude Pinot Noir

Dessert – Buy it! Whatever she/he likes, go to your favorite bakery, and buy it.

Banfi Brachetto d’Acqui Rosa Regale (For chocolate items)

Chateau Cotee Sauternes (For all other desserts)

This will drastically reduce your stress and make them happy.

Or, you could just skip the whole thing (and avoid doing those pesky dishes) and come out and enjoy the evening with us. We’ll do the cooking and the dishes, pour the wine, and keep the lights low for you to drag those old lines out of storage to see if they still have traction.

Good luck.

March 2006

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Beware The Idle of March

March is a tough month for chefs. October’s excitement about butternut squash and braised meats has long since given way to January’s desperate menu construction with beets, parsnips, and more braised meats which has itself metamorphed into a wistful longing for halibut, morels, and asparagus. We have no idea what to do with the menus. The temptation is strong to search the country and spend top dollar to fly in all the spring ingredients and pretend that spring is here.

But we can’t let ourselves get too far ahead of nature. We must persevere with what we have been given and make it good. Soon our farmers will be loading spring crops into our walk-in cooler. Rhubarb and ramps and English peas are coming. Just a little longer. I can’t wait.

Right now, black trumpet mushrooms are in and you can see them at a few of the good produce departments in Pittsburgh. Oven-drying concentrates the flavors of weak off-season tomatoes, giving a good flavor to the following arctic char dish. And Camembert with fig is always great.

Below is a quick, fairly simple March menu. The Sixth Sense Syrah is really tasty. You might want to get an extra bottle to make up for what you’ll drink while you make dinner. Of course, a Sauternes would be great with the cheese as well. I actually sometimes like a good Normandy hard cider with this cheese but those can be difficult to find in Pennsylvania.

Black Trumpet Mushroom Velouté with Brioche Croutons

Saint Supéry Virtú Sauvignon/Semillon Blend, Napa, CA

Polenta-Crusted Arctic Char, Fingerling Potatoes, Oven-Roasted Tomatoes, Spinach

Sixth Sense Syrah, Michael and David Phillips Winery, Lodi, CA

Caramelized Isigny Camembert with Fig Jam and Marcona Almonds

Tokay, 5 Puttonyos, Hungary

April 2006

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Asparagus. Ramps. Morels. Rhubarb.

What else is there to say?

The hardest part of this month’s menu is capturing the ingredients. Without a well-timed garden and a knack for wild-foraging, you’ll have to buy some of them. Whole Foods stocked asparagus, ramps (wild leeks), morels, and rhubarb last spring, and I saw asparagus, morels, and rhubarb at Giant Eagle as well. I expect the push by Giant Eagle to upscale and Organic-ize some of their stores will lead to wider availability of these ingredients. (A retail online specialty food store called Earthy Delights is another good source.)

Fresh asparagus is Spring’s most divine food. Bursting from the ground, shooting towards the new sun, aching to be picked and eaten, you must consume it as close to harvest as humanly possible. You owe it to yourself as a reward for surviving another brutally gray Western Pennsylvania winter. I remember last year meeting with one of my farmers early one Saturday morning to get the very first asparagus, which we would serve that evening. I nibbled raw stalks as I drove around to each of our restaurants, dickering with the chefs about their shares of the precious bounty.

Ramps are brash and rude. That's probably why I love them. My ramp-finding spot, located along a stream on some Western PA Conservancy land (where I never harvest, only observe) develops a great onion/garlic stink even before the leaves of the ramps have cleared the ground. Unlike wild chives or onions, ramps have pairs of broad, spade-shaped dark green leaves which appear before the forest canopy fills in. Once you chomp a raw ramp, you’ll easily be able to find them in the wild by smell. [Please never harvest wild foods on protected land and never, ever harvest the entirety of any wild crop. Pick just a little and leave the rest to propagate. Preservation our beautiful Western Pennsylvania environment should be of utmost importance to anyone interested in wild edibles. And, of course, if you're not sure what a plant is, have someone else try it first.]

Morels are more mysterious. I subscribe to a mushroom forager e-mail discussion group that has been consumed with morel discussions lately. As of the very end of March, no local morels had been spotted. They need the correct terroir, humidity, and temperature to appear, and sometimes have a very short season. I hound the foragers every early spring, begging for the first morels. Hopefully they will appear by the next week or so. I have never found any wild. Chanterelles, oysters, hen-of-the-woods, sure. But no morels. I must mention that eating wild mushrooms is a game for experts. Even with my familiarity with the edible species, I do not eat the wild mushrooms I find. If you feel you must go a-foraging, go with an expert.

Rhubarb seems to grow along every fence row and every back porch throughout rural areas of the state. It is easy to grow but does tend to take over an area. Grow some. Just don’t eat the leaves. The mild sourness of the stalks is due to oxalic acid which is highly concentrated in the leaves. It is toxic in large doses in people but does just fine in the compost heap. I love having rhubarb in great quantities, and will make rhubarb jam to enjoy it through the year.

Below are four recipes that embrace the bold and fresh flavors of spring. The wines in italics are my suggested accompaniments.

Grilled Local Asparagus with Shaved Parmesan and Lemon

Lolonis Ladybug White, Mendocino Valley, CA

Alaskan Halibut Medallions, Fava Beans, Ramp Coulis

Ponzi Pinot Noir, Willamette Valley, OR

Pan-Roasted Chicken Breast, Wild Rice, Morel Pan Sauce

Dry Creek Meritage, Napa Valley, CA

Local Rhubarb Crisp, Pine Nut Topping

Jackson-Triggs Vidal Ice Wine, Niagara Peninsula, Ontario, Canada

May 2006

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What Bill Likes

With my professional attentions on so many restaurants, each with a unique style of food and dining, I’m often asked, “Bill, what do you like to cook?” Of course, the easy answer is “everything” because that seems like the most truthful response.

I love what we do at all the restaurants from the simple, fresh California-Mexican of Mad Mex to the complex mixture of Asian elements to the complexly simple food at Eleven. However, after some contemplation I wonder, “What do I like to cook?” I guess the illustration of this would be what I cook at home. With two small children and little time, I have to keep it very simple and usually make pasta with chicken or braised pork, home-canned tomato sauce, and whatever vegetables looked great at the store.

But, while I do enjoy those simple dishes and the ease of their preparation, it doesn’t really get to the heart of the question.

What do I like to cook? Well, I like to grill a steak and sauté a perfect piece of fish. I like to cook (and eat) the manifold beauties of the swinely form. I love seasonal food products and really fresh field vegetables and artisanal ingredients that have been loved by the people that produced them and great cheeses made of unpasteurized milk from pastured animals. I like simple desserts and the custard motif is my favorite. I like to make and can preserves at home.

I like to cook things with good memories attached to them. As a young cook, I remember working at the Occidental in Washington, DC, and the endless sautéing and frying of soft-shell crabs. In season, we served hundreds of crabs a day. We even sang a song: “Mr. Softie you’re the one, that makes lunchtime so much fun,” (sung to the tune of Ernie’s Rubber Duckie song) which originated from John Lencher, a Sous Chef there at the time. I initially viewed eating the whole crab as a ridiculously repulsive notion, but once I was cajoled into biting into a fried soft-shell on a soft bun with mayonnaise and vinegar (not creamy) slaw, I fell in love with my little mouthful of Chesapeake Bay Springtime. During those hot DC springs and brutal DC summers, I cooked and rode my bike… and ate a lot of soft-shell sandwiches. Life was good.

What follows is the menu from the second entry of our Dinner with the Chef at Casbah. It is my menu and I’ll be joining the guests in the dining room for dinner. I tried to squeeze in everything I like to cook, to eat, and to talk about. I may even sing my song. I’m attaching recipes for most of the dinner, although I would never try to produce this at home for just one meal. It is the first draft for the outline for my food soul - matched with some of my favorite, soul-soothing liquids.

Antipasto for the table:
Parma meats
Uplands Farms Pleasant Ridge Reserve cheese
Marinated roasted peppers and fennel

Unibroue Éphémère Beer, Quebec, Canada

Sautéed soft shell crab, grilled asparagus, lemon-parmesan Reggiano sauce

Cava, Freixenet Gran Cordon Negro, Catalan, Spain

Serrano ham-wrapped Alaskan halibut, white beans and chanterelles in spring garlic broth

Joseph Drouhin Mersault, Burgundy, France

Grilled ribeye roast, wild-foraged morels, new potato and ramp sauté

Panther Creek Youngbird Hill Pinot Noir, McMinnville, O, USA

Crème brulee, strawberry-rhubarb jam, pine nuts

Bodegas Dios Baco Oloroso Sherry, Cadiz, Spain

June 2006

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Bill Fuller... Mixologist!

As you may have gleaned from elsewhere in the newsletter, we recently opened a Mad Mex® in Monroeville. I have been very busy (no matter how many restaurants we bring into the world, the births are always painful). After putting in long hot days and hectic nights in the Mad Mex® kitchen, nothing is more relaxing than having a margarita.

A margarita - now there is a beautiful thing. A good one is refreshing, flavorful, and takes the edge off. It is a great hot weather drink, good for sipping on the porch. Like any recipe, political candidate or favorite James Bond actor, everyone’s version of a perfect margarita is different, and people hold steadfast to the fact that theirs is correct and all others are tawdry imitators. Margarita drinkers love their options: sweet or sour, frozen or rocks, Triple Sec, Cointreau, or Grand Marnier, and which of many tequilas should go in. And of course the fruit option. The ratios are argued too (a summary of common ratios follows from Wikipedia.com):

2:1:1 = (50% tequila, 25% Triple Sec, 25% fresh lime juice)
3:2:1 = (50% tequila, 33% Triple Sec, 17% fresh lime juice)
3:1:1 = (60% tequila, 20% Triple Sec, 20% fresh lime juice)
1:1:1 = (33% tequila, 33% Triple Sec, 33% fresh lime juice)

I prefer the 1:1:1. Easy to remember, and lots of flavor and refreshment without getting hit in the head with the booze. Holding to that ratio also controls my home mixologist’s (AKA my wife) heavy hand with the tequila. I also prefer a small part of the lime juice to be fresh squeezed orange juice (I use tangerines when they are in season). Instead of Triple Sec, I use Cointreau. Although I use good tequila, I prefer a clear or silver which is young, rather than the Añejos or Reposados, which are aged, often in wood, and can make for an oaky margarita.

To go with the margaritas, a little guacamole is a great thing. The basic recipe is avocado, lime, and some tomato-y product (salsa, pico, etc). I had an excellent guacamole in Tucson. The recipe, which is listed below, was little more than avocado, tomatillos, lime, and cilantro pureed together.

If ancho chile is great with red meat and red meat is great grilled, then margaritas are great in the summertime when you are grilling red meat. So I've also included my recipe for Chili-Crusted Ribeye.

To complete the analogy (and meal) have some strawberries and ice cream for dessert. The local crop will be available for a few weeks starting this weekend (hopefully). They MUST be savored. Buy as many as you can get your hands on, eat them, make jam, share with your friends. You can even fire up the blender and make a frozen margarita with strawberry.

Tomatillo Guacamole

Grilled Chili-Crusted Ribeye, Red and Green Sauces and Asparagus-New Potato Salad

July 2006

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Bill Fuller looks back at hunger

This month, on July 16, big Burrito will be hosting a fundraising event at Eleven for the Taste of the Nation/Share our Strength charity. The event will be a cocktail hour and tasting menu with dishes prepared by all the big Burrito chefs who will be joined in the kitchen by other chefs from around the city. ToTN raises funds and awareness to fight childhood hunger. One of the more exciting facets of ToTN is that most of the money raised goes to local organizations (70% to local recipients; Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank, Just Harvest Education Fund, and Urban League of Pittsburgh; 10% to Pennsylvania Hunger Action). Upon learning this I was unable to say no to hosting their event this year. There are a lot of hungry children in Western Pennsylvania. I know, I was one.

It is always difficult for a single mother to raise children. It is even more difficult in a small town where support is lean and need is high. It always seemed that every other Friday, after the rent and electricity and the rest of the angry white envelopes were paid, there was scant money for amenities like food. It was not that my mother was lazy, she worked full-time in the laboratory at the local hospital, five shifts a week as a waitress at Dutch Pantry, and two nights a week at the local branch campus of Penn State assisting in the teaching labs. But the wages and tips were low and the expense of keeping three children fed was high. Food was always scarce.

We hoarded the good groceries. Not that we were permitted to do so, but after grocery day, we would sneak the best canned and dry food out of the kitchen and hide it in our bedrooms. The best breakfast cereal would be hoarded immediately, leaving the slow to enjoy sharing mom’s Shredded Wheat or begging for Wheaties from me. Canned soups were another high shrink item with special emphasis on Dinty Moore Beef Stew. Of course, this led to a series of covert ops as we swiped the food from each other that we weren’t allowed to hide in the first place. The perishable goods we would just eat as fast as we could before they were gone and we didn’t get our share. Mom, who was at work, was unable to consistently manage the food wars, and we fought it out on our own. The first purchases I made after beginning a paper route at 10 years old was frozen pizza and ice cream. Supplemental food became a regular expense for me, in addition to a burgeoning junk food habit.

One winter Thursday evening, when all three of us kids were still in elementary school, the house was out of food. Few reading this column might understand what that means, but it means OUT OF FOOD. Besides mustard, ketchup, and spices, all that was available was a little Bisquick for pancakes, syrup, and milk (somehow we always had milk). Mom made the pancake batter and was preparing to put them on the griddle when she asked us to move the chairs in from the other room (the kitchen chairs served multiple purposes throughout the sparsely furnished house). We were clowning around, as kids do, pretending to be superheroes. My sister grabbed a chair, yelled “Wonder Woman!”, swung it over her head, and smashed the kitchen’s single fluorescent light. The tiny glass shrapnel blasted the kitchen and ruined the pancake batter. We had no dinner that night.

We were recipients of free lunches at schools, supplements from food banks, and boxes of food during the holidays from Salvation Army. We welcomed the assistance, letting our pride take a little vacation while we gloried in having a whole canned ham for dinner. Pride couldn’t get far enough away to keep us from palming the free lunch token to the lunch ladies hoping our friends wouldn’t see. And I’ll never give a can of green beans to the food bank now, after all we endured as children. Throw some canned peaches in those boxes, man! I can only understand fully now, with small children of my own, my mother’s fear and desperation worrying about providing food for her children.

So I hope to do my part to raise money to help the poor and hungry. Because they are there, next door, down the street and across town. The hungry are often working, trying to pay bills and feed families on next to nothing. A little help is appreciated by people in true need. It is the least we can do, those of us who can, to help feed kids who struggle to get enough food every day.

Below are two recipes that will be part of the Taste of the Nation event at Eleven.

Corn and Lobster Chowder, Chive Crème Fraiche

Beer

Littleneck Clams, Early Local Corn, Fermented Black Beans, Spicy Broth, Fresh Noodles

Reisling

August 2006

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Bill Fuller screams for ice cream recipes

It is hot. Record heat. Wildfires in the west. Tropical storms building in the South Atlantic. Massive thunderstorm clusters in the Midwest generated by temperature and humidity imbalances, spawning tornados and hail. Even triple digits on the mellow West Coast. Rural anxiety over drought warnings, milk production, and livestock stress. Urban centers fretting about power outages, crime rates, and overheated un-air-conditioned citizens. Sticky, sweaty, sweltering, not even fun heat. Too darn hot even to form whole sentences. The only respite the crowded swimming pool, the laboring air conditioner, and above all the mind-numbing gin and tonic.

And ice cream. Nothing like the pause for the slow suck on the spoon, the swirl and slip of the tongue, the clink of cold metal in the bowl to scrape up the last spoonfuls of melt. Everybody loves ice cream in the summertime. Sitting on the dark porch with a cold bowl in your lap, the little chill spots on your thighs, the drip from the bowl’s condensation sliding down your forearm as you bring up the spoon in the other hand. Ice cream goes with watching kids chase fireflies as you pray for a tiny breeze. Eventually everyone gives up and the kids and the neighbors’ kids load into the car for DQ.

We love ice cream at the restaurants and have decided to share a few recipes with you. An ice cream sandwich, a delicious caramel ice cream, frozen cashew terrine, and a cold/hot dish from Kaya. It all exists to please your mouth and cool off your brain.

Soba's Cashew Terrine

Casbah's Sea Salt Caramel Ice Cream

Eleven's Ice Cream Sandwich

Kaya's Tomato Soup with Chili-Corn Ice Cream

September 2006

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Bill Fuller’s Fridge Overfloweth

As the growing season crescendos to the big September finale, our kitchens are loaded with tons of great, local produce.

As many types of tomatoes as one can imagine and then some (here is a selection of varieties we have kicking around: Brandywine, Cherokee Purple, Green Moldovan, Snowball, Sweet Orange, Grape, Yellow Pear, Cherry, Juliet, Aunt Ruby's German Green, Black Krim, Omar's Lebanese, Hillbilly), squashes from Zucchini to Acorn, every herb fresh and in abundance, peaches, the last of the blackberries, numerous melon varietals, and the beginnings of the apple onslaught. At least ten kinds of peppers, two corns, four beans, multiple potato varieties, and Pennsylvania Simply Sweet onions fill our shelves. We are all so excited about these great vegetables that it is hard not to buy more than we can use. We just want a lot of everything knowing that in a month most of it will be gone and in two months we’ll be left with butternut squash, apples, greens, and beets.

In celebration of this season, PASA, Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture, is celebrating local food week from September 10 through Sept. 16. A comprehensive list of all the events is available online here.

There are a lot of great events that will be worth checking out, seminars, demos, and dinners. My big recommendation is the market tour and cooking demo by Chef Derek Stevens from Casbah, Monday Sept. 11, at the East Liberty farmer’s market. Come and meet Derek, one of local agriculture’s greatest supporters and a phenomenal cook. Also check out some of the great farmers at the market including the always charming Art King of Harvest Valley Farms, great organic garlic and other stuff from Mike Luber and his Bluebird Farm, and organic vegetables from Susanne Meyer and Neil Stauffer of Mildred’s Daughters’ Farm in Stanton Heights.

With this same bounty exploding the two CSA subscriptions I get at home, I’ve been desperately cooking and canning just trying to empty the refrigerator before the next load shows up. I try to make dishes with a simple roasted or braised meat served along with a lot of vegetables. Corn, one of the only vegetables palatable to both my 5 year old and 3 year old, has been figuring prominently. The great ingredients of this season lend themselves to making simple, quick items that taste great. Here are some of the things I have been throwing together at home.

Apple and Sweet Onion Carnitas Soft Tacos with Spicy Cucumber Salsa, Corn on the Cob

Anderson Valley Hop Ottin’ IPA

Roasted Chicken Breast with Summer Vegetable Cavatelli

St. Supéry’s Virtú Napa Valley White Meritage

Watermelon on the Porch

October 2006

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If I could save time in a Mason jar

Tonight, during halftime of Monday Night Football, I wandered out to the kitchen for a little snack. Yeah, we all know we aren’t supposed to eat before bed but we all do. I toasted two slices of good multi-grain bread, spread them with way too much organic cultured butter, and pulled the half-pint jar of pear butter out of the fridge. I spooned it on, paving the bread thick and sweet. My favorite part is, as you spread pear butter on the bread, there develops in front of the spoon an interface at the leading edge of the pear butter where it begins to mix with the melted, broken butter. This bite is the best bite, the excessive butter piled up and barely mixing with the swell of pear butter. Oh, man.

I made this pear butter last fall. While visiting my sister-in-law’s parents’ family farm outside Reynoldsville, PA, the kids and I wandered upon an old pear tree. We picked a few and ate them. While the skin was mottled and the flesh a little mealy, the flavor was amazing. I asked if it was okay to take a few pears home and we were given the go-ahead. In fact, the more the better because, besides feeding the deer, they would just go to waste. We collected a good bushel of pears and chucked them in the car. My intention was to make pear butter.

I grew up in a family that exemplified DIY. We gardened and grew everything, fixed our own cars, welded, plastered, carpentered, canned, dried, smoked, sewed, knitted, pickled, hunted, and (the more rural branch of the Fullers) trapped. My grandfather’s pipe tobacco came not from the store but his attic where last years crop was always drying. I still feel confused guilt at the idea of hiring a plumber for my house, or taking the car to my mechanic. You are just supposed to do it yourself. But the food part, I hold that close. You just have to make it yourself.

Apple butter making was quite an affair. Sometime around dawn a tripod was constructed from ‘extra’ drill pipe liberated from the gas patch. My child’s eye has it reaching into the sky so it must have been about ten feet tall. From this a length of heavy ‘cow’ chain terminating in an iron hook was hung. This held the very large, black iron kettle. A conservative hardwood fire was tendered underneath. Meanwhile, the women were peeling and coring bushels and bushels of apples. As they were cleaned, the apples would go into the kettle with some sugar. Wild sassafras root, dug on the old Fuller Farm, would go in as well. The pot was stirred all day with a small oar and everyone (especially kids) was required to take turns. Later in the day, it was funneled into pint Mason jars, sealed, and put up. The cache was distributed to all involved and we ate this throughout the year on toast, ice cream, and by the spoonful, savoring the sweet apple flavor touched with smoke and the wildness of the sassafras.

nice pears With neither an accessible extended family, surplus drill pipe, nor a long, empty autumn day at my disposal, I set out to devise an efficient method for pear butter production. I washed all the fruit and dried it, and filled every roasting pan in the house with the fruit, skin, seeds, and all. I placed these pears in a low oven (225° or so) overnight. In the morning, the pears had softened and burst, releasing a great pre-breakfast aroma into the house. I ran them through my food mill into a stock pot, brought it to a boil and reduced it to the lowest simmer, and reloaded the roasting pans with more pears. That evening, after checking the pear butter on the stove throughout the day and stirring it, I removed the rest of the pears from the oven and foodmilled them into the first batch. This mixture went back into the roasting pans and into the same low oven overnight and through the next day. This reduces the water away without forcing you to stand over a stove all day and all but eliminates the possibility of scorching it. You get a few dark bits around the edges but I just stirred this back into the pear butter.

After work the next evening, I scraped all the reduced pear butter into my pot, adjusted the sweetness with a little sugar (and didn’t need much), and brought it to a simmer with some sassafras. (I wish I had dug more because the sassafras flavor is less than I would like.) I cooked this out until it got to the texture I wanted then canned it in half pints. I got a lot of half pints and gave a bunch away to family and friends. Of course, I made sure to keep some in my jam stash cabinet in the basement. I believe this pear butter, a little more refined, a little more delicate, is as good as any made by the Fuller tribes of my youth. Less seeds and bits of twig, by far, although I do miss the smoky flavor. It is close enough, at least, to punch my ticket and take me back to the tripod, the oar, and the kettle.

November 2006

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So it is the day after Thanksgiving...

You are avoiding the malls and hanging around with family. The house full of relatives is moving into aggravated boredom with the pickings off yesterday’s leftovers. Gotta feed the people.

One of the crazy pieces of my brain is the desire to cook for people outside of work. I really like to cook. My summer week at the beach house is exciting to me partially because I get to cook for a bunch of unquestionably appreciative people. I hit the seafood houses and get clams, fish, shrimp, mussels, whatever they have that looks good, and go back to the house and make a big dinner. I drink wine while I cook, make what I want, and get the complete adoration of a house full of people that all got an extra two hours on the beach because I made dinner again. I look forward to cooking on holidays too, ruling in my own kitchen, making things my way. It isn’t work, I relax completely and have a blast. I even like to cook on the days after Thanksgiving, making items that are absolutely not turkey and stuffing.

The day after Thanksgiving, peoples’ mouths want a different flavor. After the gently comforting flavors of the Big Meal, they need some spice and flavor to refresh them. A little zest and freshness. Their bodies want relief too. There is a lot of starch and meat and cream and butter that is being slowly metabolized. A light, refreshing bite of dinner to fill them up without weighing them down is exactly what the cardiologist ordered. Mexican and Asian foods are great items. Also, a nice Italian dinner. And for the cook, the less to do the better.

I love fresh pasta. Everybody loves fresh pasta. My all-time favorite is fresh cavatelli. Tender and exciting, the ridges on the back and the hollow in the front hold sauce wonderfully. Made with a ricotta dough, they can be as delicate as any gnocchi. Of course you are asking yourself, “Why is this guy suggesting I make fresh pasta after I spent all day yesterday in the kitchen?” I would never do such a thing. There are nieces and nephews to wrestle, siblings to argue with, and stupid movies to watch on TV. The answer; frozen pasta. For the everyday cook, there are perfectly fine frozen pastas available at the grocery store. I like the Chieffo’s brand available at stores around Pittsburgh. If you are ambitious, it is easy to whip up a batch of fresh cavatelli on a quiet Saturday, freeze it laid out on a sheet pan, and bag it for future use.

Here is a nice, simple meal. Serve the salad and pasta family style with a lot of good Ciabatta bread. Take your time at dinner. Let the kids eat quickly then brain each other in the living room while you finish the wine and cheese.

Watercress, Apples, and Walnuts in Pomegranate Vinaigrette

Cavatelli with Rapini, Italian Sausage, Tomatoes, and Fresh Ricotta

Amarone (at PLCB Specialty Shops)

Castelmagno Cheese with Brown Turkey Figs and Very Old Balsamic Vinegar

Vin Santo (at PLCB Specialty Shops)

December 2006

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Soup’s on!

Man it got cold fast! It was inevitable, but the unusually warm late autumn weather we had for Thanksgiving fooled us into forgetting ‘The Not-Mystery of Pittsburgh’. This brutal, incontrovertible truth is that winter in Pittsburgh is wet and cold and gray. Everyone you know will have a cold, your heating bills will skyrocket, and slush will go over the tops of your shoes and freeze your feet with salty street-dirt ice water. I love this city and wouldn’t trade Pittsburgh for anywhere in the world (except possibly Barcelona) but even the most ardent ‘Burgh-o-phile cannot deny it: winter is tough.

To fight off winter’s death-grip, I suggest soups and stews. A big pot of flavorful vegetables and meat steaming up the kitchen windows is a great antidote for the blues. Also, it gives you a break on a few future meals so you can get the house decorated, do some shopping, or attend a holiday happy hour or two.

We opened Casbah in the Fall of 1995. The two soups we had were Caldo Verde, a soup of sausage, greens, and potatoes in a hearty chicken stock, and Roasted Butternut Squash. The squash soup became a crowd favorite and re-appears every Autumn and hangs around on the menu until it seems we have roasted every butternut squash east of the Mississippi. It is a resoundingly simple soup that, when prepared well, is elegant comfort food.

A soup I make at home is rustic and delicious and works great as a whole meal. There is no name for it, except maybe ‘How Do I Get A Meal Out Of Odds And Ends’ Soup. It is simply made with loose Italian Sausage, root vegetables, hearty greens, and tomatoes. I make it thick, and serve it over rice or pasta for a whole meal.

Finally, I want to share a soup that we served recently at a dinner for Jacques Pépin here in Pittsburgh. He was in town for a speaking engagement and we were lucky enough to get to make him dinner. His publicist informed us that he likes mushrooms so Derek Stevens of Eleven put together Chanterelle Mushroom Chowder. If you are out of fresh White Alba Truffles, you can substitute a touch of truffle oil. One of the highlights of the dinner was Chef Pépin hanging out in the kitchen with us. We chatted about dinner, listened to his stories, and discussed fresh pork belly, duck, and hamachi. Talking Kitchen Guy to Kitchen Guy with probably the most famous living chef was an incredible experience for all of us.

By the way, he loved the soup!