Recipes from Bill Fuller, big Burrito Restaurant Group Corporate Chef

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 2008

January

Segue with soup

big Burrito Corporate Chef, Bill Fuller

After a busy, busy holiday season in the restaurants and with big Catering, Christmas Eve dinner at my house, Christmas Day dinner at my in-laws, a couple of impromptu holiday gatherings at our house, preparing for the ‘little’ New Years Eve party that my wife hosts at our house (that I get to a lot later), and of course the long day of New Years Eve Stress at the restaurants, I am Cooked Out. Throw in a bunch of meals out at restaurants, the heaviness of traditional holiday foods, and 43 bottles of wine I think I consumed over the last two weeks, I barely want to eat either. Ugh. If there is ever a point in time where I just can’t face food, it is the first week of January.

I also have some resolutions to work on. I have promised myself I will eat a lot more vegetables this year and accordingly reduce the amount of braised pork belly and beef short rib fat in my diet. I will get back to regular exercise, which has evaporated in the last month and a half of chaos, and take care of my body. And I will make more time to have meals where our whole family sits at the table in our house and eats together.

An easy way to eat my way into a couple of these is to cook to eat better. Some salads filled with vegetables will be a regular appearance on my personal menu (I know, I know, they are neither seasonal nor local, but I’ve got to clean out the blood a little). But salad alone does not feed the machine. A little warmth and deep flavor is needed to get through the wintry season. So I’ll put together a big pot of soup or stew, load it up with vegetables, and soak some great bread in it. That produces a bunch of meals for the week, transitions the hearty meat eating into hearty vegetable eating, and makes everyone feel better. A big pot of an old Italian soup, Ribollita, is a great way to start. Beans, greens, vegetables, and a little meat make a great soup. Ribollita, which means re-boiled, is traditionally thickened with bread in addition to the starches from the vegetables. I like to keep the bread on the side and make some crusty croutons scented with a little anchovy.

So here are the recipes:

Ribollita, My Way, with Big Anchovy Croutons

The recipes are PDF documents. If you don't have the free Acrobat Reader, it's available at Adobe’s website.

February

To all the grills I've loved before

big Burrito Corporate Chef, Bill Fuller

Often, I am asked the seemingly simple question – “Bill, which is your favorite restaurant in big Burrito?” Of course, that should be easy. But easy never is. I try to draw analogies to things like, “Which of your children do you like better?” or, for car types, “Which car in you past is your favorite?”. It is hard to choose. They are all my favorite, and not one of them is a favorite. I like to relate it to old girlfriends. Here we go:

Kaya – First love, hot and wild. We had a great time. Spending every day together, every waking moment, living inside each other’s skin, this was IT! But the affair burned like magnesium – hot and bright and short, because, after six months as Kaya’s ever-present, ever-yelling Sous Chef I left her to open:

Casbah – First love, for real this time. My first Executive Chef gig. We jumped into a wild romance, which (as they all do) shifted into a slightly calmer marriage. There were still ups and downs, long stretches of passionate love interspersed with furious fights. We grew up together and I learned to be a real Chef. It was tough on her, on our relationship, but I really do owe so much to her. Finally, after a few years really trying, we grew apart. She went to other Chefs and, although we hooked up through the years when she was lonely, I dated around for awhile with:

Mr. Jones, Vertigo, and the Saybrook twins – During my first tentative steps on my own after the break up, these relationships were more casual, with short days and long nights, switching from one to the other. This phase drew to a close as my time was spent with Saybrook East, trying to change her into something she wasn’t. I knew that if she could be a little Italian seafood bistro and not a Connecticut seafood shack, she’d make it. But love can’t change the world, no matter how much I enjoyed roasting Striped Bass and Pork Chops in her wood fired oven. This period was the bleakest, with few successes and numerous discarded promises. Heartbroken, I drifted into:

Soba – She had had a string of affairs that left her confused, leading us to join our broken hearts into one whole. We spent two wonderful years together. During this time, each helped the other grow; I led her from nightclub work to a steadier life as a restaurant while she introduced me to the exotic pleasures of Asian cookery. We had many wonderful children, producing in that kitchen great cooks that are many of the chef leaders of big Burrito. We had a great relationship, and when she married her current Chef, I was happy for them.

I spent a lot of time with my old friend Mad Mex in the following years. Always a party buddy, we recently had struck up a closer relationship. As we became intimate, I saw that her partying lifestyle and seemingly careless ways were really a cover for a more serious side. I fell in love with what had always been there, just escaped my notice. Since then, she has been a part of my life, and the marriage has been great. Except for a little dalliance on the side called:

Eleven – A long-legged beautiful fashion model with expensive tastes and a demanding way with Chefs. We spent a lot of passionate nights out on the town, credit cards humming, as I tried to keep up with her desire. All the Chefs loved her, and she let me know it. While she is still an angel, I am happy that there is another to feed her and clothe her in the style to which she is accustomed. But oh, those days…

So now I am friends with them all, with memories of the times we were close. And I love them each for the time we spent together, for the marks the made upon my soul. We hang out, chat, and of course there is the long term relationship with big Catering and my secret affairs with Warhol Café and Café Phipps to keep it interesting. So this February I toast all my restaurant loves with:

Salmon Tacos with Citrus Ponzu, Chico Pobre Shrimp Wrap

Bear Republic Racer 5 (see above), Healdsburg, CA

Because we all love Mad Mex and it all starts and ends with a great beer!

March

Origins of dishes

big Burrito Corporate Chef, Bill Fuller

I often get asked about how we develop a dish. The process is different for each. Sometimes it develops from a dish we ate somewhere else and wanted to make our own. Often, it is an extension of an idea for something that we think we would like to eat. But sometimes, it is serendipity. The Soba Seared Rare Tuna was one of those dishes.

In 1998, I returned from a month-long trip to Thailand enraptured by the food. Thai food in Thailand tastes like Thai food here, but better. The smells of the food stalls, the taste of the fresh ingredients, the wet pavement and sound, even the omnipresent bug carcasses in the cooked rice; I wanted to share it all with Pittsburgh. Of course, the bugs wouldn’t pass muster, but I dug into the rest. I bought a lot of cookbooks about Thai, Chinese, and Korean food.

Why these three? A number of reasons. First, these are three cuisines that I had enjoyed already in the States and wanted to explore further. Second, resources for the other flavors of the regions; Laotian, Burmese, Indonesian, etc. had not yet developed in the US. Finally, and probably primarily, I was fascinated by the relationship between Southern Chinese and Northern Thai cuisines and was anxious to understand the similarities and differences and how the foods of these two states had progressed through time independent and distinct yet connected. And Korean food? Well, I loved eating Korean food when I lived in California and missed those flavors.

My first assaults on the menu were Thai. Thai fried rice, with its lighter, zestier approach, evolved into the Pork and Shrimp Fried Rice that is on the menu today. Pad Thai worked out of a recipe I found in True Thai by Victor Sodsook that tasted like a particular street vendor Pad Thai I had one last night in Bangkok. Our spring roll filling recipe, currently a Shrimp and Chicken Springroll, developed from my Todd Mun, fried Thai fish cakes, that never sold even though I loved them.

Curries too, grew. I threw away all canned curry pastes (trust no Thai cookbook that tells you that they are just as good as fresh) and located fresh Kaffir lime leaves, turmeric root, and galangal to make our own curry bases. (This grew over time to an exploration of all curries and how they evolve and change with regions, but that is for another column.) And from Chinese cooking came sauces: fermented black bean sauces, sweet and sour sauces of all varieties, and barbecues. Barbecues – in all countries there are barbecues. They aren’t called such, but nearly every people that chuck a piece of meat on the grill has some sort of sweet/sour/spicy sauce designed to counter the smoke and char of the grill.

So, this finally leads to the tuna. We were struggling at the time with a tuna dish. We had tried different dishes and none really stuck. Too light, too fancy, too simple, too overpowering. Concomitantly, we were deep into the kim chi phase. Straight cabbage kim chi, radish kim chi, kim chis with dried shrimp, delicious kim chis, kim chis that were disgusting. Many kim chis. We made them and let them ferment in the basement before we served them. I was also reminiscing about Korean meals, where the servers bring many little side dishes and you grill marinated raw meat at the table. Working on a dish that represented this meal-memory, I stumbled across the final piece of the puzzle – Goju Jang.

Goju Jang is a fermented soybean and red chili paste from Korea. It figures into various sauces in Korean food and can be a table condiment. It has a distinct earthy, mildly spicy saltiness that I really dug. This seemed like the perfect barbecue and, after I incorporated brown sugar, ginger, sesame oil, onions and garlic, it turned into a barbecue sauce. But a sauce not too powerful to be paired with something meaty yet delicate, like tuna. Eureka! Tasted great together. To go with it, like any good barbecue, there had to be slaw and, what is kim chi but a fermented Korean slaw. A little sweetness goes too so we took a sweet and sour sauce and used it to make a quick cure for a cucumber salad. And the bedrock, a Thai-style simple fried rice with chilis, ginger, garlic, cilantro, scallion, sesame oil, and fish sauce. (Squid brand fish sauce in the green topped bottle, if anyone is interested.) Toasted crushed peanuts added a final crunch and finished the dish. The three lines of inquiry had resulted in a really good dish. Thousands and thousands of seared rare tunas later, it still reigns supreme on the menu.

So here is the dish, home-style. If anyone out there actually attempts it, please drop me note. It goes well with a red that has some body (please don’t sacrifice a delicate Oregon Pinot Noir to it) and, since I am currently interested in American Red Blends, I recommend the below wine.

Seared Rare Tuna with Korean Barbecue

2006 Ménage à Trois Red, California

April

Mary had a lotta lamb

And so did her husband: big Burrito Corporate Chef, Bill Fuller

Over the last year, we have embarked on an exciting new journey of making monthly specials for Mad Mex. Some of the more successful items have been the Chico Pobre Shrimp Wrap, Tofu Tacos (now a menu item), and the wildly popular Gobblerito (see countdown clock here). It gives us a chance to try out new ideas, have a little fun, and give our staffs and our diners a little something new. (As one might imagine, even the most devout Mexer loses some interest in eating burritos after a few years of slinging them). It has been a blast, and every month I get excited looking towards the next new dish.

Recently, it occurred to me that my love affair with Keith Martin’s Elysian Fields lamb at Eleven and Casbah was probably worth a try at Mad Mex. Real Mexican food is loaded with roasted goat and lamb barbacoa and the great flavor of lamb holds up to other big flavors. Keith’s lamb is tender and well-marbled, fed with grass and grain similar to the way Prime steaks are produced. It is killed young when it has a delicate lamb flavor before growing older and getting ‘gamey’. I have turned many lamb-haters back into lamb-lovers with Elysian Fields lamb. Of course, once you eat Keith’s lamb, there is no going back to others.

Elysian Fields lamb, for those not yet in the know, is the best lamb in the US and comes from nearby Greene County. Keith Martin, founder, owner, and lamb genius, left his career as a stock broker in 1989 to get back to a simpler life of farming. He chose lamb and decided that if he was going to do it, he might as well do it all the way. Keith’s attention to every detail of the life of the lambs drives the excellent quality of the meat. Testing for water purity, a detailed management of the grass and grain diet, breeding stock control, overseeing cutting and grading the meat personally, he watches every detail to make sure that what he ships is perfect. Not almost. Perfect.

Every Memorial Day Keith and his family have a lamb roast at his farm. They roast a lamb or two on spits and everyone dives in. This is lamb at its best and a great way to meet Elysian Fields. To try and share it, I figured we’d slow-roast some lamb and make some tacos and burritos. I picked the shoulder, a luscious cut that braises well and makes an amazing pulled lamb. We cut deep slits in the flesh and rub the whole thing with oregano, thyme, garlic, and kosher salt. That marinates overnight and goes into a hot oven in the morning. Once it is browned, we turn down the heat and let it cook all day. After the meat is tender, we pull it off the bone and try to avoid eating half of it before it even has a chance to get to the dining room.

Start the lamb early and let it braise and perfume your whole house. Make the salsa and beans, pop a beer, have a barbacoa.

Elysian Fields Lamb Barbacoa

Weyerbacher Double Simcoe IPA

May

Keep your friends close, but your vegetarians closer

big Burrito Corporate Chef, Bill Fuller

Chefs tend to have an attitude about vegetarians. I am not sure why, but I know that I had it too for the longest time. The best way to sum it up is in the following quote by Anthony Bourdain from Kitchen Confidential:

“Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter-faction, the vegans, are a persistent irritant to any chef worth a damn. To me, life without veal stock, pork fat, sausage, organ meat, demi-glace, or even stinky cheese is a life not worth living. Vegetarians are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit, an affront to all I stand for."

And while his Howard Stern–of–the–Kitchen style usually draws a wince from me, I can’t say that his statement has missed the mark at all. I have heard similar phrases and attitudes over and again during my 25 years in the kitchen. I have seen greens with salt pork, risotto containing chicken stock, and Caesar dressing containing anchovies all served as vegetarian. Worse even than this unethical behavior is the complete disregard for the vegetarian, with no option other than a salad or the soggy side of the day for the hapless Buddhist.

As I developed into a Chef, I discarded my Anti-Vegetarian attitude. The change occurred for a number of reasons; I was surrounded by more and more co-workers that were vegetarian and vegan, more and more customers asked for vegetarian options, and (most of all) a lot of the cute girls were vegetarians. Of course, in the hyper-macho world of the kitchen, this kind of ‘sensitive’ behavior was looked upon as a weakness. But vegetarians spend money too, and someone should feed them. Might as well be us.

Of course, Mad Mex was vegetarian friendly from the get-go. Chick pea chili coupled with options of vegan sour cream and soy cheese for your burrito made us a vegetarian favorite. As we opened other restaurants, the vegetarian-friendly option followed along. Almost half the Kaya menu opened as vegetarian, Casbah too. Kaya’s vegetarian zeitgeist has evolved into a monthly vegetarian tasting menu as well. Two classic favorite appetizers at Soba are the mushroom spinach dumplings and the fried tofu. When we got to Eleven, we went all in with a daily vegetarian tasting menu.

Love the vegetarian food.

In cooking vegetarian, one needs to grow beyond the concept of the “center of the plate” as meats and fish are called by food vendors. If approached in the traditional Western cooking style, without a center things fall apart. There is no main protein to provide umami, the baseline, and the rhythm guitar of flavor upon which to hang the melody of the vegetable and starch. It must be written acoustically, coming together in harmony. Good vegetarian dishes are a coalition effort where various parts come together to make a greater whole. Much less paternal, outside the ken of the Chef raised in a paternal culinary brigade system, this approach is alien and a little frightening.

Often, a Chef’s first attempts at vegetarian are awkward, with a big grilled portabello mushroom or a stuffed pepper or block of tofu serving as the gravitational pull. A little arugula underneath, a rissole of potato, and a touch of red pepper coulis and, wham, the dish is done. Okay, but done. As one’s confidence grows, the placement of the central item decreases and mixtures, stews, curries, and assemblies of multiple parts share the stage and grow into complete dishes.

And in season, when one gets great fresh ingredients, letting the product speak is the most beautiful approach of all. The flavors of May are so welcome, so pretty, and so earthy that it has to be one of my favorite months. From the time the last butternut squashes disappear from local farm fields, we dream of Spring. At least five months of longing. And, after the faint teases of April, May brings Spring slam into our mouths. Eating vegetarian in May is exciting, new, and refreshing. Granted, August is like a Queen rock opera of corn and tomatoes, but May is Iron and Wine. Simple and clean and elegant and surprising. Here is how we cook vegetarian in the spring:

Asparagus Sandwich with Sunny Side Up Farm Egg

Green Curry Vegetables

Magic Hat #9, Burlington, VT

June

For goodness, sakes

big Burrito Corporate Chef, Bill Fuller

Summer’s onset makes me thirst for sake. Not the hot, inexpensive, overpowering brew dispensed from warming machines in every sushi place in the US, but chilled good quality sake, sipped from small thimbles, subtle characters savored. I like to keep a few bottles of good sake in the refrigerator and pour them out into a chilled carafe. Sitting on the porch as the day cools into evening, letting the scent of the grass and honeysuckle mix with the flavors in the cups, is an excellent way to end a day.

There is an amazing world of sakes out there to explore and the PLCB has made an effort to stock more of them. Sake is an alcoholic beverage made from the fermentation of rice. The rice is first polished to remove the outer oil and protein containing layers to yield almost pure starch. In small amounts, these congeners give rise to nuances and delicate flavor that give the sakes character. When in larger quantity, these same flavors are detrimental. The top levels of sake, ginjo and daiginjo, are made from rice that has 40% and 50% of its weight polished away, respectively. The rice is then treated with koji, a mold that converts the starches in the rice to fermentable sugars and yeast. These processes run in parallel as fermentation proceeds.

When the process is complete, the sake is usually filtered, producing a clear liquid approximately 18-20% alcohol. Unfiltered sake is called nigori, and appears as a milky liquid with tiny, shiny flocculent material. Following are a few sakes available at PLCB specialty stores.

Sho Chiku Bai Ginjo and Sho Chiku-Bai Nigori – both made in Berkeley, CA. Excellent introductory sakes. The Ginjo is delicate, best served cold, and a good mixer if you desire a saketini. The Nigori, also best served cold, is sweeter and full-bodied, and will pair better with bolder foods.

Harushika Tokimeki Sake NV – Japanese sparkling sake, fruity with acidity. Drink alone or pair as one would a similar sparkling wine.

Tenranzan Junmai Ginjo and Tenranzan Junmai Daiginjo – a great opportunity to taste two Ginjo and Daiginjo sakes from the same premium Japanese producer. Both should definitely be served cold.

In general, it is suggested that sakes should be paired with foods that are simple, with more subtle preparations. Usually this is true although, like wine, the sweeter and more full-bodied the sake, the more it can stand up to bolder flavors. There is no equivalent to a big red wine and as such it is difficult to match sakes with red meats and red sauces. Stick with chicken or other mild meats, fish and seafood, and sushi of course.

July

Even chefs go on vacation... or do they?

big Burrito Corporate Chef, Bill Fuller

Cooking on vacation is part of my relaxation. Sipping a glass of wine, talking with friends, listening to music, what a great way to prepare for a meal. But the part of the day where I am in the kitchen and the rest of the crowd is at the lake or the beach or the park, that hour or two where I am left to my thoughts and the simple tasks at hand, that is as much a part of my vacation as any. Making this one meal, cutting, cooking, marinating, grilling, motions I have performed thousands of times, watching the definite progression to serving time, tasting and adjusting, talking only to the dogs, is my meditation. I clear my head, feed the house, and free my hands to fulfill their duty.

I like to cook the first dinner in the house. Not arrival night, that is for a quickie or take-out, but the night of the first full day. It catalyzes the transition from there to here, letting work and life massage their presences out of immediacy into a secondary paused presence. And it helps me settle into the kitchen, organize my thoughts around the week, and loads up the refrigerator with leftovers.

This dinner was inspired by some great chickens. Every week, I purchase four delicious pastured birds from the same farmer that supplies Eleven, Casbah, and Soba. Pastured poultry is allowed to forage for food, enjoying a diet comprised of grubs and seeds and whatever else is in the field. This varied and natural diet leads to a more full-flavored chicken than one fed a synthetic feed. And the acts of walking, scratching, and pecking give the meat a firm succulence. Truly a completely different chicken than out of the case at the supermarket. Worth seeking out and worth the extra price.

So with some tasty chickens, lots of herbs from a friend’s garden, and summertime vegetables (with a pinch of saffron I happened to have in my tool kit) and this dinner came together. And my mind relaxed. And vacation begins.

Grilled Chicken with Tarragon and Orange

Eggplant and Chickpea Stew

Jasmine Rice

Corn on the Cob

Alamos Seleccion Malbec, 2007, Mendoza, Argentina

Red Truck California Red Wine, 2005, CA

August

Where there's smoke, there's Fuller

big Burrito Corporate Chef, Bill Fuller

Most chefs I know have a passion for slow-smoked, meltingly delicious pig parts. I share this obsession, indulging it as often as I can. From Carolina barbecue to Hill District ribs, I love to eat the swine. However, while I have mastered the eating side of the program, I have never deeply explored the cooking end of the process. Until recently.

Early this spring, I bought a half a hog from the Burns family’s Heritage Farm near Ridgeway for home eating. It was a beautifully fat Durok pig that I had met when it was a young, tube-shaped piglet. He had matured well, converting mountains of grain and vegetables into the most flavorful pig meat I have ever eaten. So, after I chowed down on the loin and tenderloin, I set to slow-smoking the ham and shoulder chunk by yummy chunk.

smokin But, to pursue this endeavor, I realized that I needed to upgrade from my Weber kettle grill. Now, smoking in the Weber is doable, but not when you want to do a thick half a shoulder from a hog that made Casey Hampton look svelte. So I got an offset smoker, basically a big lidded grill with an attached fire box. A beautiful thing, it looks like a locomotive with it’s barrel shape and puffing smoke stack.

Next, fuel. Getting all natural hardwood charcoal is easy. Buying bags of wood chunks is just as simple. But after the first ten hour slow smoke, I realized that it takes a lot of wood. Additionally, all that hardwood can make things a little bitter. I needed some sweet fruit wood.

Luckily, Amy McConnell Schaarsmith of McConnell’s Farm was doing some big time pruning of her apple orchard. “Come on out, bring your chainsaw, and have all you want. There is peach wood as well, if you want.” Later that afternoon, the kids and I unloaded a cord of drying applewood and stacked it next to my house.

So Sunday became smoke day. I get up, wheel the smoker into the alley, and start the fire. The meat goes on when the smoke gets good, and I let it roll. All it needs is monitoring, a break between yard work or painting or organizing the garage to check the meat, baste it, poke it. Sometimes I have to pull a piece off, nibble it.

But, while it does not need constant watching, firing the smoker does pretty much keep me home all day. I can maybe run out for an hour, but I gotta get back to it to keep it going. Forces me to slow down, to ‘be’ at home. I get stuff done, mess with the kids, hang out with friends and family. Sometimes I even relax. Smoking is completely un-urban. There is no rushing it, no forcing it, no shortcuts. One must let the good smoke coax the gentleness out of tight muscle. Both the smokee and the smoker.

And, the final element, eaters. You don’t go through this process to smoke a little bit of meat, so I invite a bunch of people over, ask that they bring a six pack or some potato salad or something, throw a bunch of corn in the pot, and just hang out.

Smoked Pork Butt Tacos

Smoked Citrus Chicken

Side dishes that your friends bring

Bonus Recipe: Thai Tomato and Corn Salad

Tröegs DreamWeaver Wheat Ale

September

Local food week tour de force

big Burrito Corporate Chef, Bill Fuller

My favorite organization, PASA – Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture – is planning their annual local food week from September 21 to 27. Since we dig the local foods, and really dig the PASA mission, we are taking this opportunity to do what we love to do – cook the heck out of local foods in the prime of the harvest.

So, we start early, Monday, September 15 with Derek Steven’s Second Annual Harvest Dinner at Eleven. Corn, peaches, pigs, chickens, tomatoes, beans, sweet onions, trout, herbs, squashes, chanterelles. Lots of local stuff.

And then Wednesday, September 17, I’ll start the day with my usual bi-weekly spot on Pittsburgh Today Live. Click it on, I’ll be cooking with lots of local foods and talking about local foods. That night, Danielle Cain well be doing her monthly vegetarian dinner at Kaya with all local foods (see previous paragraph, less the dead animals), and, as is usual this time of year, with a big, giant focus on tomatoes. Last month, we did almost 100 vegetarian dinners (nearing capacity, FYI), so book early or go hungry.

soba produce That Saturday, September 20, I'll be cooking at the Farmers @ the Firehouse farm market in the Strip from 10 AM to 1 PM, cooking food for shoppers using only ingredients I find there. I show up with coffee in hand, stroll around the market, grab stuff from the farmers, and cook my brains out. We give free samples, talk to the farmers, make jokes about Pam’s “Extra-Organic” farming methods, and have a blast. If someone wants to bring a little sip of wine on down, I often get a bit thirsty talking and cooking for three hours…

The next week, we'll be doing a lot of Farmer/Chef dinners. The menus for these will heavily feature the product from local farmers. At each event, guests will meet the farmer and chef and enjoy great food. Here is the skinny:

All that week, Eleven will feature two four-course dinner tasting menus, one omnivorous, one vegetarian, for $55 and $45 respectively from Monday through Friday. These will take the place of our regular tasting menus. The menus will be entirely local (exceptions such as olive oil and seafood etc. notwithstanding) and classily homey. Look for pie to show up for dessert!

Featured farms will be Harvest Valley Farms, Three Sisters Farm, and Heritage Farms.

Monday, September 22, Brandy Stewart at Soba will host Amy McConnell-Schaarsmith of McConnell's Farm for a Chef/Farmer dinner at 6:00, 5 courses for $45. These two are my favorite women in the local food sphere. I’ll enjoy spending the evening with both of them. They’ll enjoy busting my stones.

Nearing exhaustion, we’ll feature Penn's Corner Farm Alliance on Wednesday, September 24 at Kaya. Danielle will do five courses for $45 beginning at 6:00PM. There will be animals in this one.

Finally, we tie Local Foods Week together with our Benefit Dinner Series at Casbah on Thursday, September 25. The recipient this month will be Planned Parenthood. There will be a lot of great local foods, cool drinks, and a great evening raising money.

Here are a few recipes that work great this time of year. Not that you’ll need to cook much this month.

Thai Tomato and Corn Salad

Sea Scallops, Chanterelles, Heirloom Tomato-Vodka Sauce, Crispy Prosciutto

Blushing Blair Cocktail