Russelnod.com

Sitting on the back porch of an house in Lake Union. The sun has burnt through this morning’s haze and the sky is blue and summery. My stepson and his wife have an entire ecosystem of birds they feed in their backyard. Watching the groups of sparrows swarm to the bird feeder, the hummingbirds,  the comings and goings of five Stellar blue jays between the feeder and the peanuts they leave on the porch, and the careful approach of one bold pigeon to all this largess, it is easy to think yourself into some prehistoric watering hole.

Spent the afternoon at the Bite of Seattle. Friday afternoon-perfect time to go, like going to a matinee. We walked there, about a mile and walked home, burning, no doubt, all of the calories we’d ingested. We ate at The Alley—seven restaurant tastes on one plate. The line took 15 minutes and, while you waited, you got to chat with Tom Douglas while he grilled the chicken.

For me, the standout was the “Ancient” Roman Meatballs. Small meatballs simmered in red wine, honey, and spices, no tomato. Delicious. I wanted to go back in line again, just for another serving. Halibut, some sun-dried tomatoes, a spinach leaf, and a cooked shrimp surprise at the bottom of some really smooth Dijon cream sauce. The cherry-glazed chicken was juicy and slightly sweet. The bacon-wrapped scallop on a melon relish was also I want to make at home.

I was talking to a friend about salt and perhaps I got a little carried away. My friend, Eric Green Greene, runs Treasure Mountain Mining, a mail order web site and E-bay crystal seller. He asked whether I wanted any halide halite crystals and mentioned that he had a few. I asked him to send me some pictures that I could use and the attached ones are some of what he sent.

On the upper right is a crystal from Argentina (don’t know if it’s that red in real life) [Eric says that it’s shown under short-wave ultraviolet light, so I guess it isn’t that red in real life]. On the left is a Halide Halite crystal from Germany and on the right is are Salt Crystals from California. If your love of salt extends to objects d’art, take a look. Of course, you’ll need a sign: Look, don’t lick.

[I must have gotten carried away because Eric sent me a bunch of corrections. Sorry Eric.]

Some times you get it right. For dinner last Saturday, I wanted to do spare ribs. I started with a rub on Friday night–a mix of ancho and pasilla chilis, paprika, onion and garlic granules, brown sugar, and some cumin. I added some smoked paprika and smoked salt for a little smoke flavor.

By Saturday afternoon, the ribs were slightly wet and ready to go. I used a gas grill with a box of hickory chips, and cooked the three racks slightly offset on one another for about 3 hours at 300. By then, the tips were a little dry and the meat pulled away from the bone with some gentle pressure.

Meanwhile, I was making my usual sauce. The technique is to cook garlic cloves, cumin and coriander seed, and black and dried red pepper in molasses and honey for a half hour, then add tomatoes and vinegar and simmer for a couple of hours. It is a great sauce to make and I tinkered happily with it, adding a little scotch, some squab spice mix left over from a French Laundry recipe. My wife and her ex-sister-in-law ate the pineapple I was planning to add, so I used orange and lemon juice.

The punchline, of course, was that I hated the taste. There was a bitterness that I couldn’t get past. “It tastes like all your sauces,” my wife said, which did not improve my mood. So I made a quick sweet sauce with ketchup, brown sugar, ancho chili and dried mustard powder. No vinegar, no molasses, no tinkering. It was sweet and a little spicy and that’s what I served.

Time to research the traditional sweet sauces BBQ sauces again: the Molasses-Cumin-Coriander-Vinegar vs Ketchup-Chili-Mustard versions vs. the versions yet to be discovered.

Thanks to Nomi Leidner for the pictures.

When the lease at Northampton’s Panda Garden was not renewed last year, chef Richard Lau looked around for another venue. The building on Route 9 in Hadley that had most recently housed the All Fired Up restaurant came available, and Lau found a new home. Leaving much of the inside untouched except for new coats of soft blue, green and red paint, Lau opened BUTTERFLY RESTAURANT (48 Russell St., 585-8989; www.butterflyhadley.com) in July 2007.

Lau got his start in cooking years ago in Hong Kong, where his culinary education came from three teachers, two trained in Sichuan cuisine and one in the Hong Kong style. He honed his skills in Hong Kong and Taiwan, and then, after he immigrated to the United States in 1982, in the New York tristate area. He came to the Pioneer Valley in 1985 to open Panda Garden in partnership with financial backers. Butterfly gave him the opportunity to go out on his own.

Named after a restaurant in which Lau worked when he first came to the States, Butterfly is a big operation. A first glance at the menu leads to the question, which menu? There are four: a Sichuan menu, a Japanese and sushi menu, a gourmet menu and a vegetarian “meat” menu. This last, an expansion of the seitan dishes Lau offered at Panda Garden, uses wheat gluten and flavorings to simulate beef, pork and chicken. The gourmet menu is filled with the Cantonese-style dishes Lau learned in Hong Kong when he first became a restaurant cook.

In addition to its restaurant operation, Butterfly does a lot of catering. Lau’s culinary training in Hong Kong included the art of vegetable carving, and photos of some of his creations adorn the entrance. He has standing orders for the carvings from the Boston International Seafood Show, as well as from local enthusiasts. Who can resist whole elaborately carved melons or daikon animals?

The familiar Sichuan dishes at Butterfly are well made. The hot and sour soup is dark and flavorful, but not especially hot or vinegary. The Kung Pao Chicken, which combines dried red peppers with chicken, celery, peanuts and sometimes green pepper, is the best reading of the dish I’ve had in this area. The sauce is a little richer with some overtones of five-spice powder and the toasted taste of red peppers. “You have to put the peppers into a hot wok,” Lau explains. “If you put them in cold, you don’t get the flavor.”

I may be jaded, but Butterfly’s gourmet menu is where the action is. An appetizer of Spicy Dry Fried Salted Squid arrives on a bed of chopped scallions, red and green peppers, and lettuce. The squid is agreeably chewy, salty and crisp, with enough hot pepper taste for some heat. I have a friend who insists on comparing squid to garden hoses long past any humor the comparison might have once had. If I could stand the jokes one more time, I’d feed him these and let him see that chewy isn’t rubbery.

Dr. Chen’s Herbal Energy Soup is a clear broth stewed with chicken, Chinese yam and a variety of ingredients that come from traditional Chinese medicine. The taste is of a good chicken stock with some medicinal overtones, reminiscent of Sichuan peppercorns. Lau got the recipe from a friend who is an herbalist. Perhaps it was the acupuncture session I’d had before dinner, but I did feel more energetic for the rest of the evening.

The menu has its share of translation issues. What exactly is Crispy Fried Roast Duck? I had the Creaky Chicken, which was sliced white-meat chicken sautéed with ginger slices and a slightly sweet sauce that reminded me of the sauce you sometimes get on a whole Hunan-style fish. The chicken was cooked just right: dense and toothsome without being the least bit dry. An order of Wontons in Sesame Sauce, on the other hand, was a little too watery to have much sesame flavor.

I’ve always maintained that, based on most Chinese restaurants, you’d think China had few vegetables other than bok choy and snow peas. And when you do get some Chinese greens, it is rare to find them flavored with anything more than soy sauce. The Chinese Broccoli at Butterfly comes sautéed with chopped garlic and the natural bite of the green was enhanced, I thought, with a little powdered mustard.

Butterfly’s seafood is trucked in from Boston, except for the whole fish; Lau drives to New York City for that once a week. During the summer, the restaurant uses some local produce, but during the winter Lau has to rely on the Boston and New York markets.

Appetizers range from $1.50 for egg rolls to $6.95, with most $4 to $5. Chinese dishes start at $8.95, and the top price is $15.95, for some items on the gourmet menu. Sushi is the usual $3.50 to $5.50 per roll. There is a full liquor license, including the killer Polynesian drinks like Mai Tais, Zombies and Lover’s Bowls. The restaurant is open seven days a week for lunch and dinner.

Every time I look at one of Butterfly’s menus, I find something else I want to try. I haven’t had the sushi yet. My daughter-in-law is a vegetarian and I can’t wait to get her take on the seitan menu. And, since I am often traveling from one place to another at lunchtime, I appreciate being able to pull in, park and get an interesting lunch without a lot of hassle. No Panda clone, Butterfly is more than just a standard Sichuan restaurant.

Originally published in Daily Hampshire Gazette, Friday, June 6, 2008.

Mark Bitterman, selmelier (think sommelier for salt), is trying to conduct a salt tasting for 30 food writers, chefs and other culinary professionals gathered for a symposium at The Greenbrier, a West Virginia resort. It’s long after dinner and the writers are in full party mode, making this an extremely difficult audience. But Bitterman smiles shyly and continues his disquisition, waving a bottle of fleur de sel.

As food professionals, we’re all way beyond iodized table salt. Boxes of kosher salt fill our pantries and flavor our recipes. But are we ready to abandon kosher salt, as Bitterman advises, in favor of a good sea salt?

Since this is an improvised tasting, there are no vegetables or bread and butter on which to taste the salt. Instead, a volunteer passes through the crowd, spooning a tiny pile of salt on the side of each attendee’s fist in a manner reminiscent of other parties, a fact not lost on the crowd. A waiter circulates with bottles of water.

As we work our way through the salts, Bitterman describes, and we taste and ask questions. Since most finishing salt comes in larger crystals, one cookbook author wonders, “What about baking?” There is a ground fleur de sel, Bitterman answers. “If you could only pick one salt, which one would it be?” asks an editor. Bitterman points out the Fleur de Sel de Guerande from the Loire-Atlantique region of France.

Try as I might, it’s going to take a far better palate than my own to distinguish the minerals among the various salts. They seem mostly to vary in the shape of their crystals, which affects the intensity of their saltiness.

Bitterman moves on to the specialty salts: Turkish black salt, mixed with a touch of charcoal; smoked salts, dried over smoky wood fires; and an amazing truffle salt, containing small pieces of truffle that have infused the salt with an intense woodsy flavor. “That’s the one for scrambled eggs,” observe several authors almost at once.

Kosher salt is made for kashering, the process which draws blood from meat. It is 100 percent dry and absorbs moisture more rapidly than the moist sea salts. Bitterman recommends avoiding it in favor of a good sea salt. A number of chefs, no doubt thinking of the cases of kosher salt in their pantries and the cost of sea salt, seem reluctant to throw away their kosher stash. However, we all agree that a good finishing salt belongs on the table.

The next morning, I wake with a tongue that feels like the Bonneville Salt Flats and a newfound respect for salt.

Salt, the only mineral we eat in its raw form, is a simple chemical compound, sodium chloride. Both sodium and chlorine are essential for proper body functioning. Our bodies lose salt daily, through tears and perspiration, and we need to replenish it. There’s an old story about 18th-century bread recipes: They did not call for salt, because enough sweat dripped from the kneader onto the dough. In recent years, salt has been linked to high blood pressure and limiting salt intake has become something of a fetish. The culinary writer Jeffrey Steingarten, a contrarian to the last, has cited studies that seem to vindicate salt and instead blame fat and lack of exercise for health problems. Try telling that to Attila the Dietitian, my wife, for whom salt is only slightly less poisonous than arsenic.

Salt is hygroscopic — that is, it draws moisture out of plant and animal tissue. It also slows the rotting process long enough for the bacteria responsible for fermentation to grow, which is why salt preserves foods. Virtually every culture in history has used salt to preserve vegetables, fish and meat and created condiments with high salt content (soy sauce, fish sauce, the Roman garum, to name a few). What would prosciutto, herring, Maryland crab boils, bacalau, kim chee, sauerkraut, pickles, soy sauce or Tabasco be without salt? The Egyptians used natron, a naturally occurring mixture of sodium bicarbonate, sodium carbonate and sodium chloride, in the mummification process, although cut-rate mummies were preserved using only sodium chloride. If you are interested, I recommend Mark Kurlansky’s book “Salt” for a detailed look at its history.

In the earliest days of the planet, moisture washed away the soluble minerals which collected in depressions of exposed rocks. As the oceans formed, water evaporated, but the dissolved minerals stayed. Sodium chloride was among the most common of these minerals, and the oceans became increasingly salty over time. In fact, one method used to estimate when amphibians evolved is to measure the salt content of their blood and calculate when the ocean was that salty.

Sometimes parts of the ocean became blocked and evaporated, leaving salt deposits. Sometimes brine was forced from underground up into cracks in the rock, where it evaporated and left salt domes. Oceans, mines and domes are the sources of most of the salt we use.

The process for making salt from brine is essentially the same everywhere. You find a naturally occurring source of salt water — the ocean, a salt marsh, a brine spring — and evaporate it. As the water is reduced, the salt crystals form on the sides and the bottom of the container. The crystals are then raked into piles and removed.

When salt evaporates in ponds, most of it sinks to the bottom since brine is heavier than freshwater. In France, this salt often picks up traces of clay from the lining of the salt ponds, giving it a grayish color and a mineral taste. This salt is called sel gris, gray salt. Some salt evaporates as crystals that float on the surface of the ponds. This salt remains white and is called fleur de sel, flower of salt.

Much sea salt, such as Maldon salt, is evaporated in a series of basins that use the same principle as a maple syrup evaporator. Early settlers denuded Cape Cod’s forests to make the salt used to preserve codfish until 1776, when John Sears built a salt works that used the sun to evaporate the water. Windmills provided the power to pump the brine into evaporation trays.

Salt mines, which contain a layer of salt from prehistoric sources, are often mined like any other ore. Sometimes the salt is dissolved in water, with the brine then pumped to the surface, where it is evaporated.

AFTER ATTENDING THE TASTING at The Greenbrier, I decided to conduct one of my own. I bought a starter set of finishing salts from Bitterman, who with his wife runs The Meadow, a salt, chocolate, wine and flower shop (www.atthemeadow.com) in Portland, Ore. I added the Hawaiian red salt I’ve been using for a couple of years, plus some other locally obtained sea and smoked salts. My wife set out tiny salt dishes and we spooned out 12 salts, plus slices of cucumber, tomato, and bread and butter.

As we progressed, I served grilled chicken thighs, baked potatoes and salad. For dessert, we had a selection of chocolate-covered caramels provided by some friends in the chocolate business, Cocoapelli Chocolates (www.cocoapellichocolates.com).

The results were interesting. People gravitated toward the French sea salts, especially the Fleur de Sel de Guerande and to the Maldon salt, an English sea salt with large flat crystals. Bitterman had rhapsodized about crunching Maldon salt on a salad or a piece of roast chicken. Previously, the only salt crystals I’d crunched had been on pretzels, not an entirely pleasant experience. I can say that Maldon crystals are much more delicate and that, yes, crunching Maldon salt on a salad or a piece of grilled meat is delightful.

Both the Maldon and a lightly smoked Halon Mon Gold were amazing on the caramels, especially the soft runny ones. See the tasting notes on this blog, Salt Tasting Notes.

The consensus seemed to be that finishing salts do vary enough to make the search for one you like worthwhile. The more fun salts added a nice note to the table.

For mail order, look at The Meadow’s Web site, which offers around 50 kinds of salt, including a slab of Himalayan pink salt that you heat in the oven and cook on directly. Locally, Whole Foods in Hadley has a nice array of finishing salts at the cheese counter and Cooks Shop Here in Northampton also has a good selection (I recommend the Iburi Jio, a heavily smoked Japanese salt).

Some salt-related suggestions:

Never use table salt because it is mixed with aluminum anti-caking agents and the crystals are too small. Use a crystal salt — sea salt, gray salt or, yes, kosher salt — for salting food while cooking or at the table.

Toss shrimp with a tablespoon of salt and let sit for an hour before cooking to revive the sea taste.

Toss salt on grilling chicken or steak for a simple yet powerful flavoring.

Dress a delicate summer green salad with a couple of tablespoons of good olive oil (I use an oil pressed with blood oranges), a splash or two of balsamic and a sprinkling of Maldon salt.

Try various salts on cut tomatoes.

Sprinkle a smoked salt on potato salad or grilled corn.

Don’t omit desserts from the list. My father has always sprinkled salt on his watermelon, and adding salt to chocolate or caramel has become a trendy dessert of late.

Recipes

Ma La Shrimp

Homemade Hot Sauce

Cucumber Salad

Orginally published in the Daily Hampshire Gazette, May 30, 2008.

Ma La, a Chinese term that combines “numbing” and “hot,” is primarily a mixture of Sichuan peppercorns and salt. Most recipes call for deep-frying the shrimp, but the version below simply sautes them.

When you peel the shrimp before you eat it, most of the salt is removed.

1 pound medium shrimp in their shells
1 teaspoon cornstarch
1 teaspoon crystal salt
1 teaspoon crushed Sichuan peppercorns or cracked black pepper
3 tablespoons oil

Wash the shrimp, then dry and toss them with the cornstarch. Mix the salt and pepper and set aside.

Heat 2 tablespoons of the oil in a wok and stir-fry the shrimp until they just turn pink. Remove to a plate. Add the rest of the oil and the salt and pepper mixture, and stir until fragrant. Add the shrimp and stir until the shrimp are coated with the salt and pepper and fully cooked.

Avery Island, La., the home of Tabasco sauce, is a salt dome; it was the major source of salt during the Civil War, in fact. With summer coming, you might want to experiment with a homemade hot sauce as a way of preserving all those hot peppers. Start with bright red peppers. The proportions will vary, but one source suggests using a 32:1 proportion of peppers and salt.

Wash the peppers and place in a food processor with the salt. Grind to a paste. Be careful of the fumes when you open the lid, and when handling hot peppers in general.

Place the pepper paste in a glass or ceramic jar, press down and cover with a plate. Store in a cool dark place. Liquid will form overnight. If necessary, cover the mash with additional water.

After a month or two, the liquid will stop bubbling. Either serve as a condiment, or strain and dilute with white vinegar.

This is a great summer salad. It is good for picnics because there is no mayonnaise to spoil.

2 large cucumbers
1 teaspoon crystal salt
1 tablespoon sugar
3 tablespoons unflavored rice vinegar
2 tablespoons shelled peanuts, toasted and chopped coarse
Fresh dill or cilantro

Peel the cucumbers, slice lengthwise and, using a teaspoon, scoop out the seeds. Slice the cucumber halves into thin slices. Place in a colander, mix with the salt, and set the colander on a plate. Let sit for 30 minutes.

Wipe the cucumbers with paper towels and put in a serving bowl. Add the sugar and vinegar and mix well. Let sit for 15 minutes or more. To serve, pour off any accumulated liquid and top with snips of fresh dill or cilantro leaves and the chopped peanuts.

Make all the puns you like, Frank can handle it. We wandered in here last Friday night after a fruitless search for Curtis’ BBQ. (Not surprising, since Frank reminded us that Curtis’ restaurant is in Chester, further up the road. Stuff for another post.)

Anyway, little else was open and I figured, who doesn’t love a hot dog. Turns out that Frank’s has a little case of local sausages–Italian, Andouille, Lamb, Bratwurst, and more–and the attitude to pull them off. After a little discussion on the merits of local andouille (sans stomachs, according to Frank, making it less authentic) I went for the lamb with carmelized onions. While waiting upstairs for the meal, we noticed the 6 different mustards on each table.

Suffice to say the lamb was juicy and a little sweet (chopped dried apricots, according to Frank) and needed no embellishment, although I did try most of the mustards. The fries were homemade and while they weren’t fried twice, they were brown and crunchy and very good.

While we were eating, Frank brought up some homemade baked beans to taste. Soft, with a little tooth to the skins, slightly smoky and slightly sweet (VT maple syrup, what else would you expect?). I grabbed a takeout menu on my way out the door and, I’ll be back. There are chili dogs, burgers, and a bunch of specialty dogs and burgers. Worth the stop if you are going anywhere near Bellows Falls and almost damn near worth a separate trip.

Appetizers on the way to Chester, I’m thinking.

Of course, my inital goals of all six of us tasting each salt in turn, making trenchant observations, and moving on, collapsed early in the tasting when everyone went for the flavored salts and then started tasting randomly. In another life, I will be able to grill chicken thighs and try them with table, kosher, maldon, and sea in order to really taste the differences. I provided a tasting sheet, with a description and places for notes on each salt.

For much much more on salt, see The Meadow.

Thanks again to Cinda and Jonathan, Cocoapelli Chocolates. I especially loved the soft and runny caramels.

Here are some random comments from the tasting:

Ille de Re Sea Salt:

A little bite. “Salter” on tomato than on cuke.

Maldon:

Very powerful flavor.
Smoother, more subtle than the Ile de Re.
Best on tomato. I guess he’s [Mark] right. Strong flavor.

Sel Gris de I’lle de Noirmoutier:

Sharp. Salt with teeth. Stands on top of the cuke. 
Warm, gentle flavor.

Fleur de Sel de Guerande:

Well rounded-all different flavors.
Smoother. More a part of the base than Sel Gris. [melts into it more]

Coarse Hawaiian Red Salt:

More subtle than Alaea. 

Turkish Black Pyramid:

More mono-flavored but quite tasty.
A little sweet.

Halen Mon Gold:

Milts Mild to strong. Develops on the tongue. 

Iburi Jio:

Good on Cucumber. Gets lost on bread.
Smokey and fish overtones

One question still not answered: which is the best salt for a margarita glass? I’m thinking a sel gris, something with a softer crystal and not overly large or coarse grains.

For a more detailed description of the Greenbrier salt tasting, see Ellisa Altman’s piece on Huffington Post.

It’s mid-May, around when the ladyslippers bloom. The only orchid in this part of the country, they bloom pink for a week in May. I went to the Atkins reservoir where there are some patches, but nothing. I saw some pretty white star flowers and some other tubular white blooms, but it seemed early. There was a deep freeze a couple of weeks back which killed the asparagus and I thought that might have done in the ladyslippers too.

I went to the tiny spit that sometimes connects with the tiny island–the entire reservoir is pretty small–where the largest patch I know is. One green flower, not yet opened. Two more plants without blooms.

On the way back, I checked another stand. As so often happens with ladyslippers, I looked fruitlessly and when I turned around, there was another unopened flower.

In a week, maybe this weekend even, I’ll come back and check out the blooms.

It is aptly named. Start with a bunch of losers, sprinkle in some actual chefs, and scream, yell, and set men against women, and what do you have? Maybe one or two of the women on this show could run a professional kitchen, but most of the men are sexist losers (don’t care about the sexism per se but it seems to keep them from actually cooperating). Some of the women seem to be able to rise above it and actually try to cook to Ramsey’s standards. But his goal, like some drill sergeant from the CIA, is to break them down. Rebuilding seems optional–this season more than the others. It’s like the waterboarding channel–you’re watching something that is essentially hideous.

Yet I watch it week after week. What does that say about me?

In town for a family event, we went looking for barbeque. My brother had taken me to a place nearby and we’d gotten takeout from them as well. In between the synagogue in the AM and the party at night, my cousin and her husband (Manhattanites), my sister and my wife and I got the name from my niece and directions from my brother and piled into the rented mini-van.

Mitch, my cousin’s husband, wanted something authentic. Little Richards looked the part–a small roadhouse kind of place, set incongruously in a road lined with strip malls–and it smelled of wood smoke. Inside, it was bright and covered in old metal signs and the like.

“Coarse chopped plate,” advised my brother so we got three, substituting baked beans for one of the fries. The plates came with a pile of meat chunks that were tender enough to pull and tasting mostly of slow-cooked pork. The fat was cooked out, there was a tinge of woodsmoke, and a light drizzle of vinegar and hot pepper sauce. Lexington style isn’t my favorite barbeque (I confess to being a dry rub rib man and with a hot and sweet tomato sauce on the side.), but this was good. The chopped slaw was marinated in the sauce without mayonaise. The beans were good–sweeter than the meat. The family style boat of hush puppies was amazing. Slightly sweet, crunchy, tasting of corn meal and without grease, they were the best part of the meal.

Some of the Chowhound comments were iffy, but this is the place.

 At one range, a cluster of students armed with tasting spoons samples the soup. At another, a student is preparing a mushroom risotto. Chef Carol Kelly demos making pastry horns to the three students assigned to dessert. These will be baked around pastry tips, then filled with whipped cream.

 It is 9:30 on a Thursday morning at Smith Vocational and Agricultural High School in Northampton. The class spent yesterday prepping and today the students have been cooking since 8:30, so that the Oliver Smith Restaurant can open at 10:30. Except perhaps for the size of the staff and the watchful eyes of Kelly and another instructor, John Kislo, this could be any restaurant kitchen just before service. What makes this one unique is that the staff is mostly ninth-graders.

Smith Voke, on Locust Street just past Cooley Dickinson Hospital, opened in 1908 as the first vocational school in Massachusetts. In some ways it is a standard high school with the usual complement of academic classes. However, all the classes that would be electives in another school are here given over to 14 shops, ranging from automotive to cosmetology to manufacturing and, yes, culinary arts. Students alternate a week of academic classes with a week of shop. Upon graduation, they earn a high school diploma as well as a certificate of occupational proficiency.

I first learned about the culinary arts program at Smith Voke when my company donated some computer textbooks to the school library and the faculty adviser took me to lunch at the Oliver Smith Restaurant as a thank you. The restaurant, run by the culinary arts department, is open to the public from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays when school is in session. Tuesdays are buffet days; on Thursdays and Fridays there is table service.

The restaurant has its own entrance on the right side of the school, so visitors do not have to sign in at the main desk. The clientele is roughly half staff at the school and half outside guests, including many senior citizens.

Today is not a typical day, Kelly advises me. Last night, the program catered the General Advisory Appreciation Dinner for 115, an event which thanks people in the community who serve as advisers to the various shops. In addition, Nelson Lacey, the culinary arts department’s third instructor, is on a field trip with five students. It is also the first truly sunny day of spring, and no one knows whether this means more customers or fewer. But no matter. As in any restaurant, when the doors open, the food must be ready.

Two students, checking broiling chicken breasts for Chicken Francaise, ask Kislo what the final temperature of the chicken should be. “175?” one ventures. Kislo laughs. “In my day…” He lets it hang. “You’re a little high.” “165?” “Right.”

At the pastry station, a student uses a rubber spatula to clean out a tub of whipped cream. “The reason you’re having such a hard time is that you have a big spatula for a small job,” says Kelly. “If you can work with it, fine,” she says, leaving the student to decide whether to switch to a smaller tool.

“Students come in with the Cinderella view of the profession from TV,” Kelly tells me. “We stress industry standards and what will be expected of them when they graduate. They see how hard it is and it either makes them or breaks them and those that love it, go on.” Kislo is himself a graduate of Smith Voke. He went on to work at Page’s Loft in the former Colonial Hilton Hotel in Northampton, then spent 20 years teaching in the culinary program at Pathfinder Regional High School in Palmer before coming back to Smith Vocational. A large man who looks very much the chef, he leads students through the various preparations, quizzing them on the details.

Everything is prepared from scratch, Kelly tells me. Students make stock. The breads and pastries are all baked in-house.

A little after 10, the action begins shifting to the service area. Students clean and fill the hot table, using masking tape to indicate what the covered pans hold. “How do you spell risotto?” asks a student.

The program uses the National Restaurant Association’s ProSTART curriculum, which includes a management component as well as strictly culinary instruction. Those who stay in the field might continue their studies at local culinary programs like the one at Holyoke Community College or at nationally known schools such as the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., or Johnson & Wales University in Providence, R.I. Some join the military or simply work in the field. Many spend two years getting their culinary associate’s degree from the expensive schools, then pay in-state rates to earn their B.A. from the department of hospitality and tourism management at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

Helping out today in Lacey’s absence is Mark Stockwell, a graduate who is now enrolled at Johnson & Wales and is doing an externship at the Delaney House in Holyoke. He graduates in May and will leave almost immediately for England to spend a year in a Marriott training program.

As the orders come in, Kelly shifts to the dining room, doing double duty with the front of the house and desserts. Kislo oversees the hot dishes as they leave the kitchen. The warm spring weather has apparently sent people outside, meaning that the pace is more leisurely than it had been the previous week, when rainy weather packed the restaurant.

At 11:30, I sit down to lunch. The student who seats me is as friendly and professional as any server I’ve had recently. Once she realizes I drink a lot of water, she makes sure my glass is filled regularly. I order the clam chowder and a beef roulade filled with roasted red peppers and spinach. The chowder has a good flavor and is packed with clams. The beef is spot-on medium-rare, with whole white peppercorns in the stuffing contributing a burst of peppery flavor. The risotto that’s served with the entree has a good mushroom flavor, and the candied carrots are buttery and not overly sweet. The prices are reasonable: My soup is $2, the beef $7.50. Other choices include seafood casserole for $7.50 and a grilled cheese and tomato sandwich for $3.50. Tips go into a fund that is used for student programs.

As I eat, I watch people picking up orders to go. The restaurant tries to offer food that can be made and served quickly to accommodate the schedules of the school’s teachers and other staff members, who are among the regulars.

Originally published Daily Hampshire Gazette, April 25, 2008

My wife came back from visiting a friend in Greenfield a couple of months ago and told me about a new restaurant where they’d had lunch. “Great clam chowder,” she said. “You’d love it.” Others told me about it as well. The place was called HOPE & OLIVE, which was as evocative and poetic a name for a restaurant as I’ve heard. So, we made plans to investigate.
 Thanks to my new GPS, I discovered that the name was actually the address: Hope & Olive is at 44 Hope St., Greenfield, on the corner of Olive Street (www.hopeandolive.com; 774-3150). Lucky them: There aren’t too many intersections in this area that would work as well for a name. More importantly, it sites the restaurant deeply into its neighborhood, which is where owners Evelyn Whitbeck-Poorbaugh and Maggie and Jim Zaccara, who are sister and brother, want it. They have a strong sense of community, choosing to buy locally as much as possible and pricing their offerings to encourage local drop-in traffic.

Hope & Olive is newly redone, with a dining room to your left, a bar to your right and a middle ground that offers a spot to wait. You’ll need it — the place is popular. The restaurant doesn’t take reservations for fewer than six, although you can call ahead on the day you plan to dine there to get put on the waiting list. Both times we visited on a Friday or Saturday night, we waited for at least an hour. To ease the waiting, Hope & Olive has hired a roving magician, Damien, who offers card tricks and patter. Maggie and Jim’s parents ran restaurants in Connecticut and always had magicians in them. When Damien showed up for dinner at the Hope & Olive bar one evening, hiring him seemed natural to the younger Zaccaras.

Hope & Olive rose almost literally from the ashes of Bottle of Bread, the Shelburne Falls restaurant owned by Maggie Zaccara. When it burned two weeks before Christmas in 2005, the community came out to help. The Tusk ‘n’ Rattle Cafe in Turners Falls held a benefit for the employees; a New Year’s Eve concert and an art auction also helped stabilize finances enough to open a new place. Although they initially wanted to rebuild in Shelburne Falls, the three partners realized that Greenfield offered a better opportunity to buy a place. They opened Hope & Olive last September, taking favorites from the Bottle of Bread menu and adding new ideas.

Of the appetizers, our favorites were the Eggplant Poppers, sliced eggplant rolled around herbed mozzarella, breaded and deep-fried and served with a red pepper dip, and a country-style pate served with cornichons and a spiral of beet. We also enjoyed the antipasto plate and the warm Brie and mango chutney. Bread is accompanied by olive oil and fennel seeds. When you’re seated, a large bottle of water is placed on your table, which is a nice touch. The appetizers range from $7.25 to $11.

Hope & Olive’s approach to food is seasonal, aimed at letting the flavor of good-quality ingredients take center stage. Its pork comes from Bostrom Farm in Greenfield, and its beef from Foxbard Farm in Shelburne, Mass., and Shelburne Farms in Shelburne, Vt. The fish is supplied by Foster’s Market in Greenfield, which also provided Hope & Olive with its first-of-the-season Hadley asparagus last weekend. Much of the restaurant’s sausage comes from North Country Farms in New Hampshire. This summer Hope & Olive expects to buy produce from Seeds of Solidarity Farm in Orange.

This approach comes together in dishes that make the most of these ingredients. The meatloaf, for example, showcases good meat seasoned with a hint of cumin, and is served with mashed potatoes, vegetables and a thin gravy. In other dishes, like the vegetable napoleon, built around a slice of polenta and grilled portabella mushrooms and eggplant along with whatever vegetables are fresh that evening, each ingredient was good, but I wanted something to tie it all together. The napoleon is a popular dish, carried over from Bottle of Bread, and I may be in the minority about that.

ON ANOTHER OCCASION, I had a seafood gumbo special one evening that featured andouille sausage, scallops, shrimp and mussels over a corn and red bell pepper combo and rice. The sauce had the right amount of heat, a good thyme taste and a nice roux, although I did get one mouthful of roux that hadn’t been mixed into the sauce. My wife had a pot pie with a good crust and fine gravy, but a few too many turnips in the vegetable mix. Entrees range from $12 to $20.

Desserts shouldn’t be missed. Hope & Olive’s That Chocolate Cake avoids the trap that so many commercial cakes fall into — they are either large and overinflated or dense and flourless. Instead, it has a good dark chocolate flavor, dark chocolate icing and a dollop of clearly homemade whipped cream. The apple tart was layered with custard, apples and blackberries on a nice crust, also dolloped with whipped cream.

The base wine list, which you can view online, offers glasses from $4.50 to $8.50 and bottles from $17 to $33. The emphasis seems to be on affordable, big-tasting wines rather than expensive bottles.

The bar has a good array of beer as well as hard ciders and mixed drinks, and a separate bar menu designed around smaller dishes with a tapas feel. Plus, there’s a lunch menu of soups, sandwiches, pizzas and entrees, including a Cubano sandwich I’ve got to try.

Published Daily Hampshire Gazette, May 02, 2008

I saw them today. The maple trees have tiny green fuzzies on the leaves and the willows are pale green. If you look closely, you can see that the fuzzy growth on the maples is not leaves, but instead green flowers. They’ll be there for two weeks, then fall, littering the ground with wet red blotches, a little Autumn. I grilled last night, first time of the season. A variety of steaks–rib eye, tenderloin, loin strip–with a Bordelaise Sauce, roast potatoes and an orange vinegrette over California asparagus.

Chicopee might not be the first place you think of when you want German food, but Hubie Gottschlicht has created a little bit of Bavaria in Chicopee center with his MUNICH HAUS. Located at 13 Center St., it is set in the old Bernadino’s restaurant across the street from City Hall.

Trained as a chef and butcher in Germany, Gottschlicht came to the United States 26 years ago after marrying a Chicopee native. He worked at the Student Price restaurant in Springfield for 15 years where he says Chef Rupprecht Scherff “taught me the American way of doing things.” Gottschlicht stayed there until getting an offer from the owner of Bernadino’s, who wanted to retire. He bought the restaurant and opened the Munich Haus in 2004.

I’d been there for lunch a number of times and had had some of Gottschlicht’s food at various catered business functions before I tried Munich Haus for dinner.

For lunch, I usually got one of the schnitzels. Schnitzel is traditionally a veal cutlet, pounded thin, breaded and sauteed with various accompaniments. Gottschlicht’s version uses a pork loin cutlet, both to hold down the price and because of his concern over hormones in the veal. He has a dozen schnitzels on the menu, ranging from the classic wiener schnitzel, a simple breaded and sauteed cutlet (which does use veal), to the more adventurous paprika schnitzel (with bacon, some hot paprika and a cream finish) to Berliner style (sauteed apples) and more exotic Parmesan and Bombay schnitzels. For lunch, the schnitzels range in price from $7.75 to $8.95. At dinner, they are $15.95 to $17.95.

There is also changing array of homemade sausages and traditional German favorites like sauerbrauten and beef roulade on the menu. There are a few seafood entrees and a vegetarian pasta, but you’ll want to think German food while you’re at Munich Haus. Prices are reasonable, with dinners in the $15 to $24 range, with seafood dishes, and one or two veal entrees at the high end.

The wine list has a good selection of German bottles, as you might expect, with some reds as well as the more well-known whites. A plus for wine aficionados is that the wine list is on the restaurant’s Web site (www.munichhaus.com). Wines are available by the glass or the bottle. We had the Spatbrugunder Pinot Noir, $7 and $24, which was a nice surprise given that Germany is better known for its white wines.

However, I must say that beer really complements the food and the draft German brews are quite good. We had a Polaner beer, which was fantastic. Beers are available by the glass or by the stein, which seemed the size of a riding boot when it was brought to the table.

Two friends who are German food fans joined my wife and me for dinner at Munich Haus. We started off with the wurstplatte, a sausage-sampler dinner, for our appetizer. All the sausages, except for the knockwurst and kielbasa, are made on the premises. “Pork and seasonings. No nitrates,” explains Gottschlicht.

The sampler consisted of four sausages, a tasty chicken bratwurst, a more traditional pfalzer bratwurst, long Nuremburg bratwurschens and a knockwurst, accompanied by spaetzle (think tiny egg pasta dumplings, sauteed in butter), red cabbage and sauerkraut. They were all good, but we all loved the chicken bratwurst.

Our dinners included a Jaeger schnitzel, sauced with four types of mushrooms, sauerbrauten, a schlacht platter and a Bavarian platter. The schlacht platter was supposed to come with rabbit, but, as Gottschlicht explained, most commercial rabbit is imported from China and is currently unavailable. The Bavarian platter featured sauerbraten, Jaeger schnitzel and more sausages.

Eating the Jaeger schnitzel, I was reminded of another Jaeger schnitzel I had while traveling. That schnitzel was a decent cutlet with a pasty white sauce. Not so at the Munich Haus. The sauce is dark and rich and the different mushrooms contribute a lot of flavor. The sauerbraten was our least favorite, a little drier and not as strongly flavored as we’d like. The beef roulade, which was on the schlacht platter, was wrapped around a slice of dill pickle and reminded my friend Tom of his mother’s version of the dish.

Some of our entrees came with salads. The Caesar arrived with anchovies and the house salad was accompanied by a Roquefort dressing that Gottschlicht learned from Rupprecht Scherff.

We were more than a little stuffed when we’d finished, but duty called and we ordered the apple strudel for dessert. My friend Kitty, an excellent baker, was surprised that the dough was not flaky. “It is Bavarian-style and not Viennese. It has to be chewy,” Gottschlicht explained when I asked him. The strudel is his mother’s recipe and, flaky or not, a fitting conclusion to the meal.

In addition to being open seven days a week for dinner, Munich Haus hosts some special events. The Hops Club is a monthly get-together for beer aficionados. You join the club, purchase a stein, and meet the third Wednesday of every month to sample a German beer along with dinner. In May, when the weather is nice, Munich Haus opens the front deck as a beer garden and offers all-you-can-eat grilled sausages on Tuesday and Thursday nights.

The restaurant is large, with a banquet hall in back, but it is a comfortable place to eat dinner, especially at one of the booths in the bar area. Given the ample parking and ready access off I-391, it is an easy place to visit.

This article originally published in the Daily Hampshire Gazette, April 04, 2008.
 

In “Guns, Germs, and Steel,” author Jared Diamond advances the theory that civilization takes hold in areas that have plants and animals that can be domesticated. The Fertile Crescent in the Middle East was the home to more of these than any other region on Earth, and one of the first plants to be domesticated there was the chickpea. It’s remained a staple in the Middle East — and many other regions — ever since.
 From the Middle East, the chickpea spread west to Europe and east to India, proving itself adaptable to multiple cuisines. Since it is relatively tasteless, it’s able to take on the flavors of the sauce in which it is cooked. Each region treats the chickpea slightly differently, but all use strong spices and other flavors to boost its appeal. Indian cuisine features dozens of recipes for chickpeas, or channa dal, and most of the Moroccan tagines I’ve seen include chickpeas. Every Iberian cookbook I own has a chickpea and spinach or chorizo combo.

There are two varieties of chickpeas, the desi, which is smaller and green or brown and is thought to be the older of the two, and kabuli, which is the more familiar larger yellowish bean. Nutritionally, chickpeas are high in protein, fiber and trace minerals. Studies show that they help to lower “bad” cholesterol, particularly in combination with garlic, which is a natural pairing. Together with a whole grain, they form a complete protein, making them a good choice for a vegetarian meal. And if that is not enough, I’ve read about Arab recipes for aphrodisiacs made with onions, honey and crushed chickpeas, or camel’s milk, honey and chickpeas. One 16th-century European author recommended that scholars and priests avoid chickpeas because of their aphrodisiac qualities.

After a week of testing chickpea recipes, I have not noticed any of the latter side effects, but there are some recipes that I come back to again and again. It’s easy to keep a couple of cans of chickpeas in the cupboard and some tahini (sesame seed paste) in the fridge, and the two ingredients will allow you to make a number of quick appetizers without much fuss.

Hummus, a mixture of chickpeas and tahini, is pretty simple. Wash and drain two 15-ounce cans of cooked chickpeas and put them in a blender with 3 tablespoons of tahini, a couple of cloves of chopped garlic, and salt and pepper to taste. Blend until smooth. I have found that adding a couple of tablespoons of water thins the hummus to a more spreadable consistency. Spread it on a plate, sprinkle with sweet or hot Hungarian paprika, Cajun seasoning or Old Bay, and drizzle on some good olive oil. Serve with warmed pita bread cut into wedges. It will probably take you longer to clean up afterward than to make the hummus. A quick glance at the hummus displays in your local supermarket will give you some ideas for additions: cilantro, roasted red peppers, sun-dried tomatoes or roasted garlic, for example. I’ve seen one recipe that adds ¼ cup of orange juice and 1 teaspoon of Dijon mustard to the mix.

Another great party food is spiced and toasted chickpeas. Wash and dry a couple of 15-ounce cans of chickpeas and toast them in a skillet for about 15 minutes until they are brown, adding a couple of tablespoons of curry powder or a cumin/coriander mix as they cook. Rachael Ray tosses in some black pepper and grated Romano cheese at the end and shakes until the cheese is melted. Martha Stewart toasts half the mix at a time in a microwave for about 20 minutes, which frankly seems like way too much work for me.

Falafel is another favorite of mine. Essentially fried chickpea fritters, falafel balls are typically served with a chopped salad in pita breads, drizzled with a yogurt or tahini sauce, and doused with hot sauce. You can get falafel in some of the Greek pita stands in area malls, and Rolando’s Roast Beef and Falafel in Amherst also serves falafel sandwiches. They make a welcome change from pizza or hamburgers for a quick lunch.

Falafel is pretty easy to make at home, if you don’t mind a little frying. My wife has an Israeli recipe, from a Mark’s Meadow School cookbook, that uses canned chickpeas with a slice of bread as a binder. They are moist and smooth and taste a lot like the falafel you get from street vendors.

My version below uses dried chickpeas that have been soaked overnight and mixed with bulgur as a binder. They are grainier and not as creamy on the inside, but I like them. I use sriracha hot sauce on mine, but a quick scan of the Internet will produce recipes for a more traditional tomato- and harissa-based hot sauce.

Recipes

Falafel

Yogurt Sauce

Tahini Sauce

Chickpeas with Chorizo and Spinich

This article was originally published in the Daily Hampshire Gazette, March 28, 2008.

I usually fry these in a small skillet in about ½ inch of oil. You can use a wok or, if you are lucky enough to have one, a deep fryer. For a creamier version of this recipe, replace the dried chickpeas and bulgur with 4 cups of canned chickpeas that have been washed and drained and a slice of bread.

2 cups dried chickpeas
¼ cup fine bulgur
1 large onion, chopped
½ cup chopped parsley or a parsley and cilantro combination
1 large egg
4 large cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground coriander
½ to 1 teaspoon hot Hungarian paprika or ground cayenne
1 teaspoon baking soda
Vegetable oil for frying

Soak the dried chickpeas overnight in cold water; or alternatively, cover them with water, bring to a boil for 2 minutes, then let sit for an hour or so until they are softened. Soak the bulgur in ½ cup boiling water for 30 minutes before using.

Add the soaked chickpeas to a food processor with the onion and pulse until the mixture is thick. Add the drained bulgur, parsley or parsley/cilantro combination, garlic, baking soda and spices and blend. Let sit for an hour in the refrigerator.

Form the mixture into small balls about the size of a walnut and flatten them slightly. The mixture won’t hold together especially well, but it will be fine after it is cooked. Heat about ½ inch of vegetable oil in a small frying pan until it is hot. (Place the end of a wooden spoon in the oil. If bubbles immediately form, it is ready.) Fry five or six balls at a time. Do not flip them until the bottoms are nice and brown. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Place on a rack or on paper towels in a cookie pan and keep in a 350-degree oven until the rest are done.

Serve in a warmed pita, with chopped romaine lettuce, cucumbers and celery, grated carrots and chopped scallions. Top with tahini or yogurt sauce (recipes follow) and sprinkle with hot sauce to taste. Or, serve the falafel over a Greek-style salad and top with tahini and hot sauce.

1 cup yogurt, whole milk or partially skim
2 cloves garlic
Juice of half a lemon

Mash the garlic on a cutting board with some salt and mince finely. Add to the yogurt with the lemon juice and stir. You can fold in a seeded and grated cucumber, if you like.