Month: July 2016

John Hoffman has been the executive chef at Fossett’s for just over a month, but he’s already bringing a Southern influence to the kitchen. He previously worked at Keswick’s sister hotel, The Sanctuary, on South Carolina’s Kiawah Island for four years before moving to Virginia. We asked him to share a recipe he’s looking forward to cooking for Keswick guests this summer.

“From my time in Charleston, South Carolina, I wanted to bring some of the Southern influence to the refined Keswick Hall. This dish embodies the subtle, delicate flavors of the summer, and we try to let summer’s ingredients speak for themselves with our minimalist approach. Summer squash grows everywhere and is frequently overlooked as just another filler in a vegetable medley. We wanted to showcase it in a way that it stands out as a vibrant broth for the small flake of flounder. The rice served alongside it is stored with wild red bay laurel leaves for three years to impart a subtle flavor to again complement the butter flavor of the fish.”

Summer squash broth

1 yellow onion (chopped)

1 summer squash (chopped)

4 oz. Egyptian onion or shallots

(chopped)

4 cloves garlic

1 tsp. tumeric

1 qt. water

Combine all ingredients in a pot and cook for one hour on low. Strain through a sieve and season the stock with salt.

Laurel-aged rice and peas

1 small yellow onion (diced)

2 tsp. olive oil

8 oz. Anson Mills laurel-aged rice or basmati

12 oz. water

4 oz. field peas or butterbeans

Cook the onions on low heat in olive oil until translucent (about six minutes). Add rice and water and bring to boil over medium high heat. Cover the pot with a lid, reduce heat to low and let cook for 20 minutes. Season with salt and fold in butter and peas.

Flounder

6 oz. flounder fillet

1 tsp. kosher salt

2 oz. canola oil

Heat a sauté pan with canola oil over medium high heat. Carefully place the seasoned fillet skin side down into the pan. Heat for four minutes and turn the fillet over and cook for an additional four minutes.

Ice cream dreams

Nothing spells out s-u-m-m-e-r quite like a melty, drippy scoop of ice cream. Here are nine local options we’re digging right now (and always).

Top row:

Half Baked: Ben & Jerry’s (Barracks Road Shopping Center, 244-7438)

Coconut: Kirt’s Homemade Ice Cream (Albemarle Square Shopping Center, 202-0306)

Peach almond: The Market at Grelen (15091 Yager Rd. (Somerset), (540) 672-7268)

Middle row:

Raspberry sorbet: Splendora’s Gelato (317 E. Main St., Downtown Mall, 296-8555)

Cherry vanilla: Chaps (223 E. Main St., Downtown Mall, 977-4139)

Chocolate: Splendora’s Gelato (317 E. Main St., Downtown Mall, 296-8555)

Bottom row:

Mocha honey: The Market at Grelen (15091 Yager Rd. (Somerset), (540) 672-7268)

Banana: Coldstone Creamery ()1709 Emmet St. N, 529-8526)

Purple cotton candy: Kirt’s Homemade Ice Cream (Albemarle Square Shopping Center, 202-0306)

Ice to a bartender is like fire for a chef: The amount and type you use will affect the outcome of the final product. Let’s talk about the main types of ice bartenders tend to use.

Large format or block cubes: These are used for chilling a drink without adding much dilution, like with a whiskey on the rocks or a bowl full of punch. The larger surface area means the ice will melt at a slower rate.

Cubed: The most common ice, usually a half-inch to 1″ in size. This ice can be used for a wide range of purposes, but is ideal for cocktail mixing.

Cracked: Ice cubes that have been cracked into smaller pebbles to increase the amount of dilution they add to a drink.

Crushed: Ice that has been pulverized and has the texture of coarse snow. When ice cubes have been smashed completely (with either a mallet or a blender), it has the highest dilution rate. This ice is ideal for watering down sugar or booziness in drinks like juleps or tiki cocktails.

But when do you shake and when do you stir? If the cocktail is all spirits (and sometimes a syrup), stir for about 15 to 20 seconds with cubed ice (don’t crack it!) until a chill develops on the glass. A Manhattan, for example, is just whiskey, sweet vermouth and bitters. If you were to shake this cocktail, the final product will be thin and watery and the subtleties of the whiskey you chose will be rendered moot.

When a cocktail has juice or egg whites added to it, it’s best to shake well with cubed ice for about 10 to 12 seconds and double strain it. Shaking not only helps emulsify the ingredients (try stirring an egg white cocktail and not grossing yourself out), it quickly brings the cocktail to -7 degrees Celsius, below the freezing point of water and almost halfway to the freezing point of (some) alcohol. This translates to a silky smooth and refreshing mouthfeel.

At the end of the day, just remember: Your cocktail is only as good as your worst ingredient.—Christian Johnston

Like any good Southern recipe, the origins of sweet tea are about as clear as an oversteeped pitcher of Lipton. Southerners of all stripes clamor for their own little piece of the beverage’s lore.

Central Virginia, it seems, doesn’t have much of a stake. Thomas Jefferson certainly loved his tea—his financial records show he purchased nearly 20 pounds of it annually, and of all sorts of varieties—but he likely never iced it. And Alexandria Tyre, marketing and communications manager for the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, confirms “sweet tea wasn’t a thing until well after Jefferson’s death.”

Tyre says according to her team’s “unscientific survey,” the first recipe for sweet tea was published in 1879. That would have been a recipe by Texan Marion Cabell Tyree in a cookbook coincidentally titled Housekeeping in Old Virginia. But that’s hardly the end of this yarn.

Jenna Mason, manager of the Southern Foodways Alliance, points out that Summerville, South Carolina, has for years claimed to be the “birthplace” of sweet tea. But culinary historian Robert Moss has found little evidence to that claim, saying it was mostly a marketing angle drawn from the fact that Summerville was an important early tea-growing location. Alas, Moss says, “Yankees were drinking sweetened iced tea as far back as the 1860s, two decades before [they] plucked the first tea leaf in Summerville.”

Whatever the origins of the beverage, most people agree sweetened iced tea isn’t the same as sweet tea, and according to Moss the first recipe that dictated sweetening a large quantity of hot tea before ever pouring it in a glass came somewhere around the late 1920s or early ’30s.

In the 2010s in C’ville, you don’t have to go far for a decent glass of sweet tea. Whether washing down barbecue at Red Hub or pairing the bevvie with local grub at Brookville, that balance of sugar and tea-leaf bitterness will never be far from your summer dining table.

“I love sweet tea,” Brookville chef/owner Harrison Keevil says. “And we sell quite a bit—a lot on the weekends.”

Keevil, whose Southern-inspired cooking belies his British ancestry, admits to a bit of blasphemy when it comes to his sweet tea. He sweetens the base with simple syrup (with or without mint infusion) on request.

“Sweet tea can be cloying. It’s about finding that balance between the tea and the sweet,” he says. “I do it with simple syrup because you can control the tea itself and the sweetener.”

Newly minted

Want to take your sweet tea to the next level? Infuse it with mint. Want to take your mint to the next level? Grow it yourself. “The beauty of mint is it is very easy to grow,” Brookville Restaurant chef/owner Harrison Keevil says.

Just remember two things, and you should be good to go. One, pot your mint. “If you plant it in the ground, it will take over,” Keevil says. At Brookville, he’s even thinking of reserving an entire garden for mint.

Two, carefully consider the type of mint you’d like to grow. Most likely, you’ll want a traditional peppermint or spearmint, but varieties such as pineapple, pennyroyal, ginger and horsemint abound. In addition to Kentucky Colonel spearmint, a favorite of Keevil’s is mojito mint.—S.G.

Serge Torres, Fleurie’s pastry chef since November 2015, grew up watching his mom, a chef, and helping her in the kitchen. But it was his sweet tooth that led him to focus on pastry. “I really enjoy the diversity of options that come with the profession and being able to express my creativity by making tasty and beautiful pastries, breads, desserts and chocolates,” he says.

The French-born chef’s résumé includes jobs in notable kitchens like Le Cirque and Le Périgord in New York City and, locally, Kluge Estate Winery and the Farmington Country Club. We asked him to tell us a few of his favorite guilty pleasures.

Always on the bar: Ricard (an anise-flavored liquor) on the rocks

Special-occasion drink: Claude Thibaut Janisson’s Blanc de Chardonnay

Energy source: Playing tennis in the sun

Breakfast: Toasted baguette with European butter and fig jam dunked into a hot cup of black coffee

Lunch spot: Aromas Café

Chinese restaurant order: Fried pork dumplings

Sandwich: Panini with ham, tomato and Gruyère cheese on a baguette

Unusual ingredient: Red pepper in sorbet

Healthy snack: Plain yogurt with honey

Unhealthy snack: Krispy Kreme donuts

Condiment: Grey Poupon Country Dijon mustard

Chocolate: Valrhona 66 percent pure Caraibe dark chocolate

Grocery-store cookie: Petit Beurre shortbread with chocolate

Dessert: Baba au rhum

Beer: Stella Artois

Ice cream flavor: Häagen-Dazs Salted Caramel

Kitchen aroma: Fresh baked bread

Always in the home fridge: Fig jam and European butter

Always in the pantry: Coffee

Bodo’s order: No baguette = no Bodo’s order

Salad bar toppings: Anything but carrots

Eggs: Sunny side up—runny!

Cut of meat: Tournedos/filet mignon

Fish: Sea bass with fennel

Vegetable: Onions and peppers

Midnight snack: Ice cream

Knife: Serrated

Appliance: Coffeemaker

Cookbook/magazine: Le Journal du Patissier

Mentors: Claude Terroni, French baker and pastry chef instructor

Dream trip: Tahiti, snorkeling in the sun

Food city: Paris

Cooking clothes: White chef jacket and jeans

Kitchen shoes: Anything comfortable and made of leather

Food-related tattoos: None, but if I was to get one, it would be of a rolling pin.

First food memory: My mother’s gratin dauphinois (like scalloped potatoes).

Best meal ever: Still waiting…

The bread man

It’s clear Torres is serious about the baguette, an iconic French symbol and the subject of much debate. Each year, Paris holds a competition for the best baguette according to guidelines set by French law.

It’s honey season, y’all! Bee colonies like the ones at Hungry Hill Farm have been buzzing around for months, and it’s time to reap the rewards. According to farm owner Glenn Clayton, June and July are the “height of the honey flow,” and one beehive can hold upward of 60,000 honeybees this time of year. 

Most of the farm’s harvest is classic wildflower honey, made from the nectar of whatever flowers the pollinators go out and collect, which is available at $7 for 16 ounces. For the true connoisseurs, there’s the sourwood honey—more difficult to produce, it’s made with the nectar of sourwood trees, which only bloom for a few weeks during the summer. Those bees are kept separate from the others and given easy access to the flowers, and a 16-ounce jar of the sourwood honey goes for $12.

As for what to do with the honey once it’s harvested? Clayton’s list is endless.

“It does well in making barbecue sauce, it’s really well used as a replacement for sugar in just about any recipe,” he says. “It’s sterile, good for treatment of wounds, good for treatment of a sore throat.”

It’s also great for keeping the bugs at bay if you happen to spend a lot of time outside. Just mix equal parts honey, apple cider vinegar and water, drink about four ounces a day for a couple weeks, he says, and say goodbye to pests.

“After about two to three weeks of doing that it’ll keep the chiggers away, it’ll keep the ticks away,” he says. “It’ll even keep your husband away from you because by then you’ll smell like a vinegar pod.”

Clayton has been keeping bees for more than 50 years, and for him it’s a labor of love. When he first picked up the hobby in the 1960s, he had no way of knowing how much the practice would change and evolve over the years, mostly due to corporate pesticides and an influx of invasive foreign insects that devastate honey bees. There was a day when he only had to check on his bees a few times a year, but now keeping the bees healthy and safe requires about triple the amount of work and attention as it did when he started. 

“Why do I still do it? Well, I’ve been stung so many times, it’s in my blood and I can’t get it out,” he says. “But really, even though it’s gettin’ to be a hassle doin’ it, it’s still enjoyable to keep bees. It’s just demanding.”

Honey at home

Want to try your hand at using some of the area’s best local honey? Tavola bar manager Christian Johnston recommends mixing up an Airmail, a classic summery cocktail.

Combine and shake 1 oz. aged rum, .5 oz. fresh lime juice and .5 oz. honey syrup* in a metal shaker and strain
into a cocktail couple. Top with 2 oz. sparkling wine and enjoy.

*Honey syrup is equal parts still water and honey. Feel free to create a twist on the classic by adding ingredients
like rosemary, orange blossom water or sumac.