Tag:

chicken

Ladder 133 Sports Bar & Grill Wins Rhode Island Food Fights Lord of the Wings 2013

by David Dadekian October 20, 2013

The third Rhode Island Food Fights event of 2013, the Lord of the Wings, was held this past Sunday, October 20th at Fête in Providence. Seven area restaurants specializing in chicken wings competed to see who had the best, according to a panel of three culinary judges (which included this writer), along with competing for the People’s Choice. Three awards, created by Ahlers Designs, were given out and for the second time at a RI Food Fights event there was a tie.

According to judges Chef Andrew Shotts of Garrison Confections, Shawna Lawton of Whole Foods Market and David Dadekian of Eat Drink RI, first place went to Ladder 133 Sports Bar & Grill for their House BBQ Wings. Second place went to South Street Café in Providence for their Lemon Pepper Wings. Underscoring the judges’ choices, People’s Choice was a tie between Ladder 133 and South Street Café. Other competitors included, Boneheads Wings Bar, Trinity Brewhouse, Wes’ Rib House and Wings Over Providence. Congratulations to both of the winners.

Ladder 133 Sports Bar & Grill, First Place winners at the Lord of the Wings

South Street Café, Second Place winners at Lord of the Wings

The winners’ artwork, created by Ahlers Designs

October 20, 2013 0 comments

chefs & restaurants farms

Gracie’s Outstanding in the Field dinner in Portsmouth, R.I.

by David Dadekian September 22, 2012

written by David Dadekian

Gracie’s Executive Chef Matthew Varga plating rosemary roasted chicken, new crop potatoes, green beans & natural juices

On Wednesday, September 12, the Gracie’s team moved from Providence to Portsmouth for a spectacular evening with the Outstanding in the Field tour. This year’s dinner was held at Aquidneck Farms on what could only be described as a picture-perfect setting with the table for 150 guests extending down to the western bank of the Sakonnet River. Gracie’s Executive Chef Matthew Varga’s menu managed to far surpass the wonders of the location in it’s perfection, and Pastry Chef Melissa Denmark’s fruit tart may have been one of the best desserts I’ve had all year (I was invited to sit for dinner as a guest of Gracie’s).

Farms represented by Varga’s menu included Blackbird Farm, Pat’s Pastured, Matunuck Oysters, Schartner Farms, Saltwater Farms, Aquidneck Farms and Shy Brothers Farm. The menu was paired with Napa Valley wines from Jonathan Edwards Winery, based in North Stonington, Connecticut, and included the debut of Gracie’s two private label wines, one based around Jonathan Edwards Connecticut Cabernet Franc and the other on Connecticut Pinot Gris.

Here are twenty-eight select photos from the evening. You can also view photos from the 2010 and 2011 Outstanding in the Field dinners. For the full set of 181 photos from this year’s event, please see this Eat Drink RI Facebook album.

Chef Matthew Varga with the Outstanding in the Field table overlooking the Sakonnet River

musk melon, Blackbird Farm prosciutto

Matunuck oysters on the half shell, cucumber mignonette

Pt. Judith lobster profiteroles, tarragon aioli, pickled ramps

Chef Matthew Varga

Danielle Lowe and Melissa Denmark preparing salads

Danielle Lowe plating the heirloom tomato, mozzarella cheese, garden flavors & verjus

Peter Kachmarsky and Matthew Varga grilling chicken

Cucumbers and radishes in verjus for the salad course

Matthew Varga plating the salad course

Aquidneck Farms chickens on the grill

The finished heirloom tomato, mozzarella cheese, garden flavors & verjus

The Outstanding in the Field table

The Outstanding in the Field table with guests

Saltwater Farms mussels on the grill

Matthew Varga in a haze of mussel steam

Saltwater Farms mussels, Aquidneck sausage, grilled onions, sweet basil

Plating the rosemary roasted chicken, new crop potatoes, green beans & natural juices

Rosemary roasted chicken, new crop potatoes, green beans & natural juices

Melissa Denmark plating her dessert

Matthew Varga photographing Danielle Lowe plating dessert

Late summer fruit tart, honeyed Cloumage, lavender caramel (to come)

Matthew Varga preparing watermelon

Late summer fruit tart, honeyed Cloumage, lavender caramel

Gracie’s owner Ellen Gracyalny

The Gracie’s and Outstanding in the Field group enjoying the spoils of victory. Thank you to everyone involved in the wonderful evening.

September 22, 2012 0 comments

chefs & restaurants cooking news

Recommended Reading

by David Dadekian December 17, 2011

written by David Dadekian

It’s that time of year when food writers take a look at that shelf of books we’ve been sent review copies of, or purchased ourselves, and suggest people give some of them as gifts. In an effort to not be a list you’ve already read—yes, The Art of Living According to Joe Beef is amazing, Ruhlman’s Twenty is excellent, I completely covet Eleven Madison Park and I hope to soon own Mark Vetri’s Rustic Italian Food and Andrew Carmellini’s American Flavor—I’m going to offer up a few things that I’ve enjoyed using and cooking from this year, including two iPad-only items, one of which may be my favorite “book” of the year and is first up in the list.

Next Restaurant – Paris: 1906 by Grant Achatz, Nick Kokonas, Dave Beran & Christian Seel

This iBook blew my mind. Not simply for the content, which is gorgeous and fascinating, but for what it represents in publishing, selling and reading a cookbook. If you know who the authors are and what Next restaurant is then you’ve already correctly assumed Next Restaurant – Paris: 1906 is a supremely complex cookbook. For those who don’t know, briefly, Next is a restaurant in Chicago that becomes a completely new restaurant every three months. I would imagine that task would require meticulous planning and, thankfully for the many of us who couldn’t get tickets to the restaurant, the planning is captured by Christian Seel, essentially an on-staff documentarian.

While it would certainly be possible to publish an entire cookbook of this visual quality every three months, the costs and production time may prove prohibitive. But as an iPad-only iBook there are no print costs (or shipping and storage for that matter) and there’s some video embedded in it as well. At $4.99 this was the easiest no-brainer purchase I’ve made in ages, and it’s also easily worth so much more. You can buy it for the iPhone or iPod, but I’m not sure I would enjoy it at that smaller size. The authors have said other ebook formats may follow. Next Restaurant – Paris: 1906 isn’t perfect, but the potential it shows is fantastic. Plus it’s a very cool book, no matter the format. Skip a couple of coffees or a beer and buy this iBook now.

Fire It Up: More Than 400 Recipes for Grilling Everything by Andrew Schloss and David Joachim with photographs by Alison Miksch.

First up is a book I wrote about earlier this year for Jacqueline Church’s BBQ Bonanza 2011. I got this book and I thought, “eh, it’s a grilling cookbook.” But my lack of enthusiasm quickly dissolved as I flipped through the book. First of all, there’s a lot of great grilling information in it. Sure, there’s a lot of great grilling information all over the place now, but that’s the point, this book has just about all of the information you could need in one place. Secondly, the flavor combinations in the recipes, while not hugely unique, are still very interesting and, as with the grilling info, the recipes are very well organized. There’s a seriously huge amount of recipes in one resource. The other thing I love about the book is it really is, as the title says, about grilling everything, and I mean everything. The chapters include: Beef, Veal, Pork, Lamb, Goat, Bison & Other Game Meat, Chicken & Turkey, Duck, Goose & Game Birds, Fish, Crustaceans & Mollusks, Vegetables, Fruit, Cheese, Other Dairy Foods & Eggs and Breads, Sandwiches, Cakes & Cookies.

The Art of Beef Cutting: A Meat Professionals Guide to Butchering and Merchandising by Kari Underly

I loved this book before I even got it, having seen Kari Underly’s videos online. This book covers everything to do with a side of beef. Having worked with Blackbird Farm for a few years now, I know a good amount about beef from raising the animal to cooking it, and when I say the book covers everything, I do mean everything. It’s beautiful, thoughtfully laid out and very educational. Sure it may be more manual-like and in-depth than some people may need, but if you really care about beef and want to study butchery, this is the book. I would imagine it’s already being used as a classroom textbook.

Pat LaFrieda’s Big App for Meat by Zero Point Zero

Want to learn more about meat, but perhaps through something more general and not as super in-depth as Underly’s book? If you have an iPad you’re in luck. The Big App for Meat just came out last week and I’ve already spent a ton of time reading it, watching some videos and showing it off to friends. It covers just about every cut of meat from beef, lamb, veal, pork and poultry. There’s 360 degree spinning images of cuts, technique videos and a Meat Quiz game. At $6.99, I truly believe it’s a steal. You can go buy it right now.

Heartland The Cookbook by Judith Fertig

Heartland kind of snuck up on me over the course of 2011. As the year went by and the growing season turned into harvest season, I found myself grabbing recipe ideas and cooking more from the book. When I did, I couldn’t help but sit down and read more of it too. There’s a lot of great material in this book. It really feels like it covers the entire vast space that is the American Midwest. As much as I appreciate the farm-to-table movement, I’ve never much cared for the term because I’ve felt that’s always been the way real food should always work, not be a labeled movement. Heartland shows that, yes indeed, that is the way food has been thought of for almost a couple hundred years in the Midwest.

The I Love Trader Joe’s Around the World Cookbook by Cherie Mercer Twohy

Here’s something a little different, but again, a book that snuck up on me as I flipped through it. I am a Trader Joe’s regular. It’s not a perfect grocery store by any means, but to feed my family of four I can’t always count on getting everything at the farmers’ markets and I don’t like navigating the supermarket wasteland. Also, as The I Love Trader Joe’s Around the World Cookbook shows best, there’s a lot of interesting international ingredients at Trader Joe’s. Sure, it’s not a fully-stocked Asian or Middle Eastern grocery (we’re fortunate enough to have several of those in the Rhode Island area) but when I need a couple of gallons of milk for the kids and they want taco shells (organic even!), it’s nice that I can also get quinoa and dried apricots in one stop. Trader Joe’s makes cooking for your family more convenient, Cherie Mercer Twohy’s book adds to the convenience, and that’s a big help to working families.

The publisher of The I Love Trader Joe’s Around the World Cookbook was kind enough to share an excerpt from the book.

[amd-zlrecipe-recipe:1]

December 17, 2011 0 comments

cooking

Charcutepalooza December: Thank You

by David Dadekian December 6, 2011

written by David Dadekian

Charcuterie Board (see lower photo for descriptions)

And so it goes. Our year of meat has come to a close. For the final Charcutepalooza challenge we were told to show what we learned all year. In Cathy’s own words, do some “showing off” with a celebration. Personally, I think a lot of the Charcutepalooza participants have been showing off all year long—and I mean that in a very positive way. I’ve had an immense amount of fun, a little frustration and a minor failure, but mostly huge fun.

The final challenge for me involved my family and the weekend after Thanksgiving, a leisurely weekend of chopping down a Christmas tree and putting up lights and decorations, all while enjoying the meats and cheeses you see on the big board above. The bresaola I had made for the previous challenge, all the rest of the charcuterie I slowly assembled over the month of November in preparation for the bittersweet end.

As I said, it was the weekend after Thanksgiving. My parents were visiting us from their home in Florida. My wife had four days off from work. My daughters were constantly excited from all the grandparent attention and all these Christmas decorations coming out—there’s a tree in the house! I knew I wasn’t going to want to cook too much after the multi-day extravaganza that is Thanksgiving, but I knew we’d want to eat something else besides leftovers so thought, what’s better than a spread of charcuterie that we can pick at as we work and play?

I made all these photographs and then we proceeded to clear the board over the weekend, cooking up the sausage and some of the lamb bacon, steaming the pastrami until it was moist and tender. My mother loved the pâté, something she doesn’t get that often, and I avoided mentioning to her that using Jacques Pépin’s very classical recipe calls for half a pound of livers with 3/8 of a pound of butter as the base. As much as I would love to see my girls eat everything on the board, they’re not there yet, though Brigid did sample all the Farmstead cheeses at the Wintertime Farmers’ Market and helped pick out two of them.

When I was making the pâté the day before I had taken out a bottle of Armenian “cognac.” I use quotes because it’s obviously not made in the French region of Cognac, but that’s what Armenian brandies have been called for many years. Supposedly Armenian cognac was Winston Churchill’s drink of choice. My dad hadn’t seen a bottle in years and wanted to try it so my wife, in perhaps a bit of whimsy, took out a couple of shot glasses with shamrocks on them for us to have a drink. The bottle from Armenia alongside the Irish shot glass kind of summed up our whole family so I made a photo, but this being a Charcutepalooza feast I had to stick the pâté in the photo too.

So with that memory and image of all my now eaten charcuterie (there’s a little lamb bacon left, but won’t be for long) I close my year of meat. But I certainly can’t end without a huge thank you to Cathy Barrow and Kim Foster for coming up with all this fun. I’ve been making charcuterie for years, but never as regularly or as focused as I did for the last year. Also, for me, the best part was expanding how I would photograph these things. I started with some different ways with the duck prosciutto, became really happy with my style as I got to the pancetta and the last three months of meat pie, galantine and bresaola have been very satisfying for me. I appreciate all the kind comments and Kim’s choosing a few of my photos for her monthly wrap-ups. I can’t thank her and especially Cathy’s inspiring challenges and tweets enough.

Special thanks also to Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn, authors of our manual for the year Charcuterie. I eagerly await their salumi book. Finally, I can’t possibly think of a way to say thank you enough to all the wonderful Charcutepalooza participants. I can’t say enough about the joy of “conversing” with all of you on Twitter. If I begin to try and list everyone’s Twitter name I know I’ll miss someone, so check out this great archive of every tweet with the #charcutepalooza tag and follow them all.

Thank you again, Cathy @MrsWheelbarrow and Kim @KimFosterNYC!