stlbites.com – st. louis food blog of bill burge

Slow Food Art of Food Menu

Jul 24, 2008 St. Louis, chefs, missouri

This is why you want to buy tickets for Art of Food

222 Artisan Bakery / Goshen Coffee – Debbie Sultan / Matt Herren

• 222 Artisan breads in roll form: bacon, brioche, and sun dried tomato olive and feta
• Goshen-roasted Costa Rican pour-over drip coffee

Bailey’s Chocolate Bar / Rooster – Robin Murphy

• Fruitland roast beef sandwich with red onion marmalade and herbed Heartland Creamery goat cheese on a housemade roll
• Bailey’s buttercream chocolate bar cake

An American Place – Joshua Galliano

• Prairie Grass Farms lamb and foie gras ballotine, apple mustard, chickpea salad, saba

Annie Gunn’s – Lou Rook III

• Duroc pork belly confit on Companion brioche roll with Atomic horseradish mustard and house made local peach chutney

Araka – Mark Curran

• Prairie Grass Farms housemade sausages
• Local heirloom tomato salad

Erato on Main – Kevin Willmann

• House smoked Guthrie Farms chicken with local vegetable chow chow

Local Harvest Grocery – Clara Moore

• Housemade hummus served on local cucumber circles and local tomatoes tossed with fresh pesto and served on Companion crostinis

Moxy Bistro – Eric Brenner

• Duck breast with grilled peaches

Niche – Gerard Craft

• Slow-roasted Greenwood Farms pork butt sandwiches with brussel sprout slaw on Companion bread

Schlafly Bottleworks – Matt Bessler

• Schlafy “Gardenworks” beet and Arugula salad
• Troutdale Farms smoked Trout Mousse with English cucumber cups
• Bacon-wrapped Hinkebein Hills Farm smoked pork tenderloin with Schlafy pale ale raspberry BBQ sauce

Sidney Street Café – Kevin Nashan

• Hinkebein Hills Farm smoked pork butt with cornmeal “toast”, Eilerman Brothers peach bbq glaze, Claverach Farm greens and pickled peaches
• On the Wind Farms watermelon gazpacho with jumbo lump crab

Veruca – Mathew Rice

• Local peach and lavender trifles

Tags: 222 Artisan Bakery, An American Place, Annie Gunn's, Araka, Art of Food, Bailey's Chocolate Bar, David Bailey, Debbie Sultan, Erato on Main, Eric Brenner, Gerard Craft, Goshen Coffee, Joshua Galliano, Kevin Nashan, Kevin Willmann, Lou Rook, Mathew Rice, Matt Bessler, Matt Herren, Moxy Bistro, Niche, Rooster, Schlafly Bottleworks, Sidney Street Cafe, Veruca

If you were cool…

Jul 21, 2008 St. Louis, events, slow food

you would be at Mad Art Gallery this Saturday for Slow Food St. Louis’s annual fund raiser, The Art of Food.

Full event details are at artoffood.org though what you’ll really want to know is who the chefs are:

Debbie Sultan & Matt Herren – 222 Artisan Bakery and Goshen Coffee
Joshua Galliano – An American Place
Lou Rook – Annie Gunn’s
Mark Curran – Araka
David Bailey – Bailey’s Chocolate Bar and Rooster
Kevin Willmann – Erato on Main
Eric Brenner – Moxy Bistro
Gerard Craft – Niche
Matt Bessler – Schlafly Bottleworks
Kevin Nashan – Sidney Street Cafe
Mathew Rice – Veruca

and possibly more to come…

Tags: 222 Artisan Bakery, An American Place, Annie Gunn's, Araka, Art of Food, Bailey's Chocolate Bar, David Bailey, Debbie Sultan, Erato on Main, Eric Brenner, Gerard Craft, Goshen Coffee, Joshua Galliano, Kevin Nashan, Kevin Willmann, Lou Rook, Mathew Rice, Matt Bessler, Matt Herren, Moxy Bistro, Niche, Rooster, Schlafly Bottleworks, Sidney Street Cafe, Veruca

En Papiawesome

Jun 27, 2008 Illinois, chefs, restaurants

Not to be confused with the famous version, at Erato on Main last night, while Kevin Willmann was away at the STL Mag A-List awards claiming his Reason to Take a Drive victory, sous chef Jon Olson was serving up Gulf Pompano en Papillote with shaved fennel, local baby onions, Oregon white truffle & farm butter.

I’m sure the majority of you are familiar with en papillote, but for those that are not, it is a French method for cooking delicate foods inside parchment paper. These days you will see some people cheat by using foil instead, but traditionally you cut a heart shape out of parchment, place the contents on one side (generally fish; vegetables; and some sort of oil, butter or sauce to keep it moist), fold it in half, fold over the seams to seal it, and bake it in the oven. The gist is that the food actually steams which results in an extremely moist outcome.

I have had three en papillotes

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Tags: Edwardsville, en papillote, Erato on Main, Jon Olson, Kevin Willmann, pompano

Going Fishing at Erato on Main

Jun 13, 2008 Illinois, chefs, restaurants

This weekend at Erato on Main Kevin Willmann is trying to win some sort of Kona Kampachi contest and will be serving what he once called “assuming fish with unassuming fish.” At least he called it that to me.

Not a fan of the duo overall “because one always upstages the other” he’s all for doing it when it works and the two items truly make something greater together than they would on their own.

The assuming fish is

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Tags: Erato on Main, Kevin Willmann

The Strawberries are Coming?

May 30, 2008 farming, general food

Having spotted a commercial for Eckert’s last night I went to check out their website and noticed they now have a blog and and on it the news that the strawberries hit for them last weekend. Pick-your-own will be happening there again this Saturday.

Also, for the less farm savvy simply speculating about rain and crop delays another entry says, “2008 has been the wettest year since the 1920’s. Here at Eckert’s, we have received 22.5 inches. Planting has been delayed for many of us, but it is not too late.”

Whether or not most of us make it to a pick-your-own farm, hopefully that means there will be more than a handful of pints coming into the local groceries and markets. I, at least, am yearning for some fruit that isn’t bananas, citrus, and apples (the only ones I’ll buy in the supermarket). Environmental reasons aside, everything else just tastes like crap.

On a mildly related note

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Tags: eckert farms, Kevin Willmann, strawberries

stlbites.com Recipe Exclusive

Apr 7, 2008 Illinois, chefs

If you’ve not been paying attention, with three trips in nine days, and probably a dozen so far this year, stlbites has much love for Erato on Main and their entire staff.

But as much as we like the staff it’s Kevin Wilmann’s daily changing menu of whatever looks freshest that keep us addictively trekking back for more; today though we’ll be talking about the one menu that doesn’t change daily.

Doubling as the restaurant’s pastry chef we’ve basically memorized Sous Chef Jon Olson’s dessert menu as he keeps it small almost always having the staples of a chocolate cake with basil ice cream and carrot cake with goat cheese icing.

Mostly this is the result of their kitchen being about the size of my closet. Still, he’s been trying to mix it up recently, and over the weekend served a lemon curd with blackberry tea foam (with I believe preserved lemon rind). The blackberry foam was a subtle flavor to compliment the tartness of the lemon, and while it did need a bit more textural crunch, when asked how he made the curd, he was happy to oblige by sharing the recipe.

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Tags: dessert, Edwardsville, Erato on Main, Jon Olson, Jonathan Olson, Kevin Willmann, Sauce Magazine

Chef’s Garden

Mar 11, 2008 farming, sustainable agriculture

Judith Evans made a brief, but nice, blog post about the Chef’s Garden event held over the weekend on her Recipe Exchange blog on stltoday.com.

If you don’t know, Chef’s Garden, utilizing a term coined by Joel Salatin, is a Beyond Organic purveyor of Micro Greens, Micro Herbs, and Specialty Heirloom Vegetables based out of Ohio that sells to many big name chefs.

I would like to comment that I always feel bad how Joshua Galliano gets hosed on the name droppings anytime An American Place pops up on the who’s who style best chef lists since Forgione is such a heavyweight.

Absolutely they should mention Forgione, and I’m not implying for a second that they shouldn’t, but the day to day operation of the kitchen falls to Galliano and it’s his food you’re dreaming about the next day when you’re thinking to yourself about how delicious everything was.

He’s also a super nice guy, and as you can see on his forum post, not only did he cook up a stellar meal with what Chef’s Garden dropped An American Place’s way, but he also gave away the excess to Gerard Craft and Kevin Willmann where their restaurant’s diners (like me) got to benefit from his generosity.

“beet plate with herbed orecchiette tossed in lemon oil, poached baby beets, golden beet chips, red sorrel leaves, raw parmesan and a red wine – beet reduction that was flavored with ras al hanout” – Josh Galliano

It was really nice to taste something so fresh and green in the first week of March, and the quality of at least what I tasted was an obvious indicator as to why Thomas Keller is a Chef’s Garden customer.

Jennifer Blome also spoke with Farmer Jones on KSDK

Tags: An American Place, beets, Cat Cora, Chef's Garden, Farmer Lee Jones, Gerard Craft, joel salatin, Joshua Galliano, Kevin Willmann, Larry Forgione, thomas keller

Jamón Ibérico Bellota

Mar 7, 2008 groceries

The minute I heard that the Wine Merchant had gotten in Jamón Ibérico Bellota a couple weeks ago I raised the question: shoulder or ham?

You see, until recently, Jamón Ibérico Bellota was not exported from Spain as it was the finest of their Jamón and they consumed it all. Because Jamón is one of my favorite hams, and I had always wanted to taste the very finest example, I’d been following the news closely that it would soon be available in the US and was shocked when Annie posted the news and answered my question that it was, in fact, the shoulder as I had suspected.

Many people quickly sum up what this ham is by saying that it is made from hogs that feed on acorns. While true it is a bit of an oversimplification of what these hogs represent.

To at least attempt to further explain what it is for you, I’ve cribbed some info from wikipedia which has a surprisingly good entry on Iberico.

Jamón Ibérico is a type of Jamón, a cured ham produced only in Spain. It is at least 75% Black Iberian Pig…the only breed of pig that naturally seeks and eats mainly acorns.

The Black Iberian Pig lives primarily in the south and southwest parts of Spain. Immediately after weaning the piglets are fattened on barley and maize for several weeks. The pigs are then allowed to roam in pasture and oak groves to feed naturally on grass, herbs, acorns, and roots, until the slaughtering time approaches.

The finest Jamón Ibérico is called Jamón Ibérico de Bellota (acorn). This ham is from free-range pigs that roam oak forests (called la dehesa) along the southern border between Spain and Portugal, and eat only acorns during this last period.

The importer of Jamón Ibérico is La Tienda a Spanish Food importer based out of New York, and although their information on the Iberico is also quite good, it is obviously written in a bit more of a sales pitch method as they stand to profit from a great deal from your ponying up large sums of your hard earned cash to purchase even a few slices of their ham.

Also, if you’ve ever seen the Culinaria series of books, the book for Spain is probably the best of the books I’ve laid hands on, and while that might just be my love of Spanish food talking, it has some excellent photographs of the Ibérico hams. If you’re in your local Borders, cruise on over to the cut-out books because I’ve seen them a lot lately.

But of course the real question is how does it taste?

In a word, amazing.

Every so often you eat something that strikes some sort of cord with you deep within your soul. The moment I sampled the Ibérico at the Wine Merchant it instantly took me back to being a kid and tasting an acorn under the uniquely childish assumption that if the squirrels ate them all the time, then they must be good.

Unfortunately, as anyone else who’s made that mistake would know, raw acorns leave a little something to be desired, and as their startlingly sharp astringency hit me I realized that they were not only not good, they were awful.

This made the Ibérico all the more striking because it really does taste strongly of acorns, and on that first bite I was immediately struck by the prominent acorn astringency. Rather then lingering, however, and ruining the flavor of the ham, the astringency marries itself with the buttery fat of the ham.

Honestly, I just don’t know how to describe it. You simply have to taste it for yourself because any words I can think of simply don’t do it justice.

Now lucky for Kevin Willmann and his staff at Erato, we decided to take him a few slices because we knew he and his sous chef Jon would be equally excited. During service I handed it to him and he asked if it needed to be refrigerated. I forget what I said, but it was something to the effect of “it would never last that long once you taste it.”

I mention it not to drop his name but because of a conversation he and I later had that evening. He thought almost precisely the same thing I did and related a story about how the moment he tasted it it took him back to being a kid playing under an oak tree with his toys.

It is one of the most amazing food products I have ever tasted, and unlike any other cured pork product I have ever had, even at $15 for the .09 pounds I bought, it is worth every penny as it is the kind of thing you should only eat alone savoring each bite so as to fully appreciate its quality.

I’ve already been back for more, and I absolutely can not wait to try the true hams (not shoulder) once they are finished curing and imported into America.

Tags: Erato on Main, Jamón, Kevin Willmann, The Wine Merchant

Dinner to Blog in Record Time

Jan 28, 2008 cooking, groceries

Porchini dusted Chilean Sea Bass (from Bob’s Seafood), roasted acorn squash, wilted red chard

It would probably be a whole lot more exciting if I learned to make more sauces, but it would also be a whole lot more fattening for a Monday night dinner as well.

Which brings me to another point: let’s briefly talk about equipment.

Get yourself a big spoon.

I should have taken a picture of these spoons next to an ordinary one to illustrate the point further, but the spoon on the left is (I kid you not) the Gray Kunz Sauce Spoon. I’ve no idea if they still make them, but I bought it from JB Prince in probably 1998 and they still make them. It was built to Gray Kunz exact specifications, and as ridiculous as that sounds, the spoon really is rad. It’s very deep for it’s nine inch length and holds two and a half tablespoons of liquid.

If you dont’ feel like ordering that, don’t sweat it, you don’t have to buy a super fancy spoon–though it is only about $9–and the spoon on the right is also excellent. I don’t know precisely what shop it came from as I got it from the Racquet Club Ladue, but it was definitely from a local restaurant supply store.

Anyway, as I’m the cooking equivalent of a gear-head, I have quite a few cooking specific spoons of which four are about this size. As the name of the first spoon implies, if you’re not feeling up to the culinarily-chic spatula techniques you see today, you can use them for saucing plates as a late-90’s-technique shout-out. But they’re also great for plating things like risotto thanks to their depth and lack of the long cumbersome handles of other large spoons.

However, this is another example of why you want a big spoon, and the reason I’m bringing it up:

Notice the color on the sea bass? It’s a result of having a scorching hot pan to sear the fish, but it’s also a result of butter and the technique utilized with the spoon.

Maybe one of the chef-readers will chime in and inform me that I’m a hack, but my technique for cooking fish goes something like this:

1. Turn oven up very high (I literally turn it all the way up)

2. Pat fish dry with paper towels and season it. (Patting it dry helps to prevent it from sticking or not browning nicely.)

3. Heat saute pan until uber-hot

4. Put oil in uber-hot pan and watch for it to sort of shimmer

5. Once shimmering, put fish in pan and do not touch it until it releases (If it never releases your pan wasn’t hot enough when you put the fish in. Better luck next time.)

6. When released, flip fish and sling in a knob of butter (in tonight’s case it was the bonus black truffle butter courtesy of Kevin Willmann).

7. When the butter melts and begins to turn brown, grab your spoon, tip your sauté pan back towards you so the butter runs to your side, and begin ladeling the butter over the top of your fish. You will literally see the color change before your eyes as it takes on that nice golden color you long for.

8. When satisfied with the color, stick the fish in the oven until your desired temperature is reached. (If you’re not immediately plating be sure to take it out of the pan when you remove it. Fish overcooks fast and the pan will do the job in no time short.)

Happy cooking!

Tags: Bob's Seafood, chilean sea bass, cooking fish, gray kunz, Kevin Willmann, porcini mushrooms, red chard, spoon

Edwardsville

Jan 6, 2008 Illinois, chefs, restaurants

Amy Zupanci, current employee of Niche but native of Edwardsville, IL, is planning to open a fine dining restaurant around Main Street in Edwardsville later this year.

With my frequent trips across the river I’d heard rumor of this previously, but the Edwardsville Intelligencer has now confirmed it with this article.

It’s safe to say I love Edwardsville, and while I think their community definitely has room for more fine dining, when I read this:

“I will do a lot of my own pickling and canning,” Zupanci said. “I don’t want a greenhouse tomato on a plate.”

The reason for this new restaurant is simply because Edwardsville is currently lacking in the fine dining department, according to Zupanci.

“We just don’t have a restaurant like this,” Zupanci said. “I would like to bring back Main Street because our standards have raised.”

it left me wondering: Just what the hell has Kevin Willmann been doing for the last year at Erato On Main?

• Canning: he does it
• Local sourcing: he’s extremely committed
• Fine dining: definitely

Now, if by fine dining we’re talking suit and tie formal, then no, you won’t find it at Erato or anywhere else in Edwardsville that I’m aware of. However, although I could very easily be wrong, I also don’t think Edwardsville wants a restaurant like that.

So if, presumably, we’re talking about upscale food in a more relaxed environment with a Niche-like dress code, then someone owes Willman an apology because he’s already doing that, and very well.

Tags: Amy-Zupanci, Edwardsville, Erato on Main, Kevin Willmann