Month: September 2015

The latest issue of Knife & Fork is on stands now and here’s what you’ll find inside. (Below, click through a digital copy of the magazine!)

• Mona Lisa Pasta’s guide to making pasta at home and seven perfect restaurant dishes.
• Caterer Gay Beery serves up ideas on sweet and savory dips.
• Hunter Smith’s fave VA beers (and their inedible companions).
• Timbercreek Market chef Allie Redshaw gets things started.
• Jenée Libby’s podcast gets down to business with local chefs.
• Our favorite soups by the bite.
• So you wanna spice things up? You got it.
• Ian Boden and Caleb Warr on this season’s dishes.
• A little pumpkin in your glass is all you need this fall.

And this month’s food and drink features:

 

An ode to bread

Let’s call Gerry Newman the starter to our local bread scene—the owner of Albemarle Baking Company has been churning out loaves since 1995, when a “bread scene” in Charlottesville was all but nonexistent. This issue’s feature takes a look into how he rose to local loaf stardom. Plus, the straight dough on local sammies, buying the right bread and the migration of the toast trend to Charlottesville. Read more here.

Let’s get fizzy

It’s bubbly season! This issue takes a big gulp of the local Champagne scene—from the history of sparkling wine (did you know bubbles in wine were once considered bad?) to Claude Thibaut’s influence on the Charlottesville landscape. A Champagne native, he brought new insight to producing bubbles from Virginia soil and currently produces three varieties from higher end to an everyday option. Read more here.

Gerry Newman can’t construct a building. He can’t set a broken bone, tune up a car or write the Great American Novel. What he can do is make the best baguette this side of Paris. Thousands of them every week, baked around the clock in a large, brick-lined oven, and available at dozens of area restaurants and shops.

When you consider the past 8,000 years or so of wine production history, sparkling wine is relatively new on the scene, becoming popular as late as the 1700s. In the early millennia of wine production, sparkling wines were usually made accidentally when a wine would continue its fermentation after warming up in the spring after harvest.

Whether you’re hosting or attending, A Pimento Catering owner Gay Beery has a few ideas on making the most of your holiday fanfare.

Drinks

Don’t worry that you don’t have a full or “properly stocked” liquor cabinet. Decide what you’d like to serve and do it well. A single cocktail offering is fine, as long as you have a good second go-to, like beer and wine, available for those who maybe have a poor history with martinis, if that’s your feature.

It’s always nice to have some non-alcoholic beverages on offer, too. Juices and fruited Italian sodas are great and easy, and if you have sparkling water on hand, with a few garnishes like citrus and mint, you’ve done it. Fall and winter give us a good supply of fresh apple ciders, and they make beautiful drink foundations (my favorite is an apple-ginger sparkler with smoked ginger syrup base, lemon juice, cider and sparkling water to top off). Have fun—and if you’ve got something extra lying around, like other herbs or citrus fruits or even fresh figs, play with those, too.

Balance

Whatever you do, think about those guests who won’t go to dinner after your party. This does not mean you need to serve dinner, but it does mean you should think about balancing the offerings (not a bad idea, anyway).

Think of hors d’oeuvres as a meal, in that you might serve some meat-based items, some dairy, some vegetables, some carbs. You’ll all feel better later.

Appetizers

Pick up a few favorite or seasonal cheeses, charcuterie and bread and crackers. Grab a bundle of seasonal fruit, which will be beautiful and delicious with those cheeses.

Look to your cabinets at home for those thoughtful gifts of local jam and honey you tucked away.

Make a couple simple spreads, and ask your best friend who’s begging to help host if she’ll bring along something no-fuss.

Set the table

Keep it simple. Just some beverage napkins and cups, and perhaps little plates to keep things neat for those folks squeezed together on the sofa. Or, get out all those cool little glasses you got from the last few years’ yard sales and enjoy using them!

Remember: It’s about sharing time with your friends, not worrying. Once you open the door, relax.

YOUR NEW GO-TO

Here are two of Beery’s sure bets for holiday party treats.

Savory

Beet borani

“Easily the most beautiful colored dish you’ll ever put on your table (but don’t offer it in a room with white carpeting). This recipe can actually be used as a base and utilize other roasted root veggies you happen to love or have an abun-
dance of, as long as it roasts up sweet and moist enough to purée (i.e. carrots or sweet pota-
toes),” Beery says. Serves four to eight guests

1 pound of beets

3/4 cup thick yogurt

2 or 3 cloves crushed, chopped garlic

2 tbsp. lemon juice

1/4 tsp. (or more) ground cumin (ideally from freshly toasted cumin seeds)

Dash of cayenne (to taste)

Olive oil

Wash the beets, rub all over with a bit of olive oil, wrap in a pocket of foil (or place in covered glass dish—just not too big) and roast at 350 degrees for about 60 to 90 minutes, or until tender when pierced with a fork. Allow the beets to cool a bit until you can handle them. Using a paper towel to shield your hands (this is where it gets messy/beautiful), slip the skins off the beets with a paring knife until the beets are cleaned of any skin (and stems).

Place the beets in a food processor and purée. Then add garlic, yogurt, lemon juice, cumin and just a pinch of cayenne (if desired), and purée until smooth. Add a bit of olive oil if you like.

To garnish, add a handful of toasted walnuts, drizzle with olive oil or add fresh dill. Serve with toasted pita or flatbread.

Sweet

“When it comes to sweet spreads, I think chocolate, fruit, nuts and combinations thereof. However much I may adore gianduia and its easily accessible cousin, Nutella, I still tend to love fruit and simple cream- and cheese-based spreads best.

“Because this is winter, I like the idea of things like caramel to serve with apples and pears, or with pound cake, ice cream or with my mom’s sourmilk pancakes,” she says.

Warm Brown Sugar-Bourbon Sauce

1/3 cup unsalted butter

1 cup light brown sugar

1/3 cup white sugar

2/3 cup cream

3 tbsp. bourbon

Bit of fleur de sel or Maldon salt (to taste)

Over medium to low heat, melt butter with sugars, stirring gently. As sugar melts, raise heat a bit and bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Continue stirring and boiling for three to five minutes, or until the sugar has completely melted and become syrupy. Add  the cream and stir to combine. Stir over medium to high heat until it’s bubbly (the mixture will reduce a bit). Pull the pan off the heat and stir in the bourbon (it will sputter a bit, so be careful), then return it to the heat for about a minute. Add salt and serve.

If you should have any left over (!), leave at room temperature and use within a couple of days, reheating gently if you like.

Whether you’re craving a delicate ravioli with sautéed local vegetables or hearty, homestyle spaghetti and meatballs just like mom used to make, our city offers plenty of ways to enjoy the ultimate Italian comfort food. Here are seven of our favorites.

Linguine alla carbonara

Tavola, 826 Hinton Ave., 972-9463

Tavola’s chefs have the restaurant’s most popular dish (ordered 30-40 times a night on weekends) “down to a science,” says chef/owner Michael Keaveny. “If you do anything that much you’re gonna get good at it,” he laughs. The dish is made with imported Italian linguine, one whole egg, Olli pancetta, pecorino Romano, black pepper and—different from other renditions—housemade sausage with locally sourced pork, a nod to the carbonara Keaveny experienced in his early days as a dishwasher at a popular Italian restaurant named Carbone’s in his Connecticut hometown. “It was made with sausage and prosciutto, and it was addicting,” he recalls. “I fell in love with it.” Obviously, his own version has plenty of us swooning as well.

Rigatoni al forno

Bella’s, 707 W. Main St., 327-4833

This best-selling dish is straight from owner Valeria Bisenti’s childhood home in Rome. It was created by her mother, who “would make me this dish since I’m a big meat-lover,” says Bisenti’s husband, Douglas Muir, who co-owns the restaurant. “She would add all the meat she had in the kitchen—usually pork and veal—and smother it in cheese.” It is no different at Bella’s, which is named after Bisenti, who is affectionately called “Bella” by her husband. Here, the rigatoni al forno is blended with the house pomodoro sauce, ground veal, ground beef and Italian sausage, then covered with shredded mozzarella and pecorino Romano and baked to homestyle perfection.

Housemade ravioli with braised greens

Orzo, 416 W. Main St., 975-6796

Chef Adam Spaar’s popular homemade ravioli entrée is a showcase of local produce. “We work with a variety of farms,” says Spaar, who lists Down Branch Farm, Sharondale Farm, Pleasant Pasture Farm in Virginia Beach and Michie Market, which features produce grown by area refugees, among his suppliers. The ravioli, handmade and cut in-house almost every day, is made with duck egg yolks to give the pasta a richer flavor. Ricotta is mixed with kale and other greens for the creamy filling, and the ravioli is cooked in a “quick, simple” pan sauce of Spanish olive oil and cream, says Spaar. It’s then topped with heirloom tomatoes and Sharondale’s oyster and shiitake mushrooms and finished with a medley of oregano, lemon, black pepper and Grana Padano cheese.

Clams oreganata

Vivace, 2244 Ivy Rd., 979-0994

Opened in 1995, Vivace is a Charlottesville classic—as is chef/co- owner Landon Saul’s spicy Clams Oreganata: steamed Virginia clams with housemade sausage, white wine, plum tomatoes and Sicilian oregano over spaghetti. “It’s one of my favorite dishes,” says Saul, who created the dish with inspiration from his time at the Italian Culinary Institute in Calabria, which is known for its spicy fare. “Calabrian chile is the star of our housemade sausage,” he says. The real secret to the dish though, Saul says, is finishing the pasta in the clam sauce, “so the pasta gets all the brine, all that flavor, from the clams,” he explains. “It’s how the Italians do it.”

Gnocchi bolognese

The Local, 824 Hinton Ave., 984-9749

“Little clouds,” is how Melissa Close-Hart describes The Local’s gnocchi recipe. And she should know—she created it. This dish is a family collaboration between her husband, The Local’s chef Matthew Hart, who developed the bolognese recipe, and Close-Hart, who perfected the gnocchi after multiple cooking trips to Italy (Close-Hart was formerly chef at Barboursville Vineyard’s Palladio and is opening her own restaurant next year). The gnocchi is lighter than most, “almost like a dumpling,” Hart says, and tossed gently with his traditional bolognese, made “in a long, slow process” with local Buffalo Creek beef and Double H pork, tomato paste, dry white wine and milk. “It’s here to stay,” Close-Hart says. “If Matty took it off the menu people would revolt a little bit.”

Pear and cheese

Basil Mediterranean Bistro, 109 14th St., 977-5700

Who says pasta can’t be adorable? These beggars purses—little bundles of ravioli—are almost too cute to eat. But topped with cremini mushrooms, poached pears, walnuts and basil in a rich Gorgonzola cream sauce, it’s pretty much impossible not to dig in.

Spaghetti with meatballs

Fellini’s #9, 200 Market St., 979-4279

This classic dish is all about “taking the time to do it right,” says Fellini’s chef Tess Vandenburg, who has adjusted both the marinara and meatball recipe in recent years. Her marinara is a little sweeter, she says, and “not too chunky, but not too watery.” The magic is in the meatballs, which are “just a little smaller than a tennis ball,” Vandenburg says, and are made with pork and beef (5 lbs. pork to 10 lbs. beef), as well as Parmesan, oregano, onion, garlic, egg and breadcrumbs. First cooked in a convection oven “to get them nice and brown on the outside,” says Vandenburg, they are finished at a lower temperature in a standard oven, then placed atop a nest of al dente spaghetti and covered with marinara.

“Making pasta is not a hard thing to do,” says Jim Winecoff, owner of Mona Lisa Pasta. “It’s messy, it takes some time, but it’s just flour and eggs and water—that’s it.”

Although pasta at the 13-year-old shop is made using an extruder, which makes 75 pounds of pasta at once, Winecoff still enjoys cranking out noodles by hand with his Italian-made Atlas pasta machine. He offers these tips for making your own pasta at home.

Choose your flour

All-purpose flour works fine, he says, but Mona Lisa pastas are made with durum and semolina flours, which are higher in gluten, giving the dough more elasticity. “It stretches easier when you roll it out and doesn’t break and crumble to pieces,” says Winecoff.

Decide between whole eggs or egg yolks

“We use whole eggs because the whites give the pasta a firmer texture, but using only egg yolks gives a richer flavor,” Winecoff explains. “If you want it really rich, use duck eggs, which have bigger yolks.” If desired, he suggests adding flavoring to pasta at this point—tomato paste, garlic, black pepper or finely chopped herbs. Just be careful adding anything that might add more liquid to your mix, like spinach, he says.

Choose your mixing method

Although pasta can be made in an electric mixer or food processor, Winecoff prefers mixing it by hand: “The easiest, most traditional way is to make a pile of flour on your cutting board or counter,” he says. “Make a well in the middle of your flour, crack your eggs into it and take a fork and slowly scramble your eggs into your flour until you get a mass of dough.”

Let the gluten relax

The dough should rest for about 20 minutes before kneading it. Winecoff lets his pasta machine do most of the kneading for him, by feeding small amounts of dough (“not quite as big as your fist”) into the machine one by one, running each through 15 to 20 times until it’s smooth.

Cut your noodles

The wider noodles, like fettuccine or linguine, are easiest, Winecoff says. Or use the pasta sheets for filled pastas such as ravioli (which should be cut in squares rather than circles to avoid wasting pasta, he advises).

But beware: “Fresh pasta is really wet, and if you start stacking it, it will all meld together,” Winecoff says. “When I first started making pasta at home, I’d have noodles hanging everywhere—over cabinet doors, all over the place—just trying to dry it out a bit so it wouldn’t stick together.” If you’re not cooking the pasta immediately, Winecoff suggests twirling it into portion-sized “nests” and freezing them on a tray. “Just drop a nest in boiling water and cook it when you want it,” he says.

Winecoff recommends cooking pasta in an 8-quart stock pot for 90 seconds after the water returns to a roaring boil. To give the pasta flavor, the water should be “generously salted—like 2 to 3 tablespoons,” he says. And sauce it quickly, he advises—“even any pasta you have leftover. Otherwise you’ll have a giant clump of noodle.”

MONA LISA BY THE MILE

18 miles

Amount of pasta made every week

73 miles

Amount of pasta made every month

303 miles

Amount of pasta made every year

3,652 miles

Amount of linguine made since opening in 2002

Growing up as one of 10 kids in a Sicilian family, Liz James learned early on about the value of a good marinara sauce. “We had to really stretch the food budget, and marinara was a quick way of creating an easy, wonderful dinner—we put it on everything!” she says.

But what stuck with her most about what she calls her “idyllic childhood” was how having that go-to sauce made it easier for her family to share meals together. When James’ husband died when her children were young, family dinners became especially important to her. “We got together whether it was over peanut butter and jelly or a bowl of pasta,” she recalls. “In spite of going through a terrible loss, we were able to come together as a family.”

And so, four years ago, to help more families “create happiness” by sharing a meal together, the Charlottesville resident bottled her marinara, derived from her family’s recipe, and founded The Happy Tomato.

“It’s pronounced ‘tom-ah-to’ because that’s how my mother always said it,” James explains. And, just like her mother, she wants to streamline dinner with a one-pot meal that can be prepared quickly for everyone in the family—even those with health concerns, she says. James takes pride in the fact that her handmade sauces, which include her marinara, a pizza sauce and pesto (available through Relay Foods, Whole Foods, Rebecca’s Natural Food and other specialty stores), are low in sodium and fat and without added sugar.

James, who often demonstrates recipes at grocery stores using her sauces, is so passionate about her product that she has been known to leave the demo table to help a customer shop. Says James, “I’ll walk the grocery store aisles to help them create a meal, so they have something yummy to put on the table.”