If you're a fan of Whitney Matheson's popular pop culture cult website "Pop Candy," you should avail yourself of the chance to meet her for conversation and drinks 5:30-8 p.m. Thursday, March 11, at Sambuca in the Gulch. She happens to be in town for a wedding and would love to meet some of her readers or just some new fascinating people to share her wry take on modern culture with.
Ashley Currie, a Nashville entrepreneur, wants to help the planet by making takeout containers more green.
Currie has started a business offering eco-friendly food containers and other disposable foodware for restaurants, caterers and anyone planning a party.
Ashley Currie
Formerly a sales rep at the Scarritt-Bennett conference and retreat center, Currie has planned special events for years, and she noticed that customers are increasingly distressed by the amount of Styrofoam and plastic waste generated by even a simple party, what with all the cups, plates, flatware, napkins and such.
Seizing upon a niche, she started iHospitality. Her inventory includes plates, bowls, cups, to-go boxes, cutlery, napkins, lunch trays, bakeware and bags. All are either recyclable or designed to break down into compost, even in a home compost bin. They are also biodegradable in a landfill.
The products are made from various materials such a bagasse (the pulpy material that remains after sugar cane juice is extracted). "Throw it in a landfill or compost it, and it will decompose and actually enrich the soil," Currie says. Bagasse is oilproof (neither butter nor olive oil nor down-home pork drippings will make it too soggy) and microwavable.
Over at Nashville Restaurants blog, we get the sad news that Taste of Russia in CoolSprings has closed. I was looking forward to more blintzes and smoked fish. While you're there, read up on Battle Ground Brewery and see if it doesn't give you a yen for a big, chewy homemade pretzel and a beer.
Ulika captures an editor's heart with Apostrophe Catastrophes and does the unthinkable: sacrifices himself to try Kraft barbecue sauce. Yeah, you can guess the result.
Meanwhile, evilchefmom also does the unthinkable and posts a mediocre recipe. We feelin' you, girl -- that's a lot of work to put into a so-so result.
Erin scores big at Big Lots with organic soba noodles and wasabi peas. I feel you, too, girl -- my last Big Lots haul included hearts of palm.
Lucky Lannae at Lannae's Food and Travel -- she went to City House for New Year's Eve, two years in a row. Did you see the Scene's Dana Kopp Franklin there? She reported a great meal there. Too bad there weren't name tags.
One of the most acclaimed chefs in America, Chicago restaurateur Charlie Trotter, is in town whipping up a little dinner tonight for some socially prominent Nashvillians. Trotter is bringing his "A-Team," approximately eight chefs, says music mogul Billy Ray Hearn.
Hearn, the founder of EMI Christian Group, will be hosting the dinner with his wife, Nancy. Some 17 or so guests will enjoy the dinner supervised by Trotter, who is one of the original celebrity chefs thanks to his five-star restaurant Charlie Trotter's, which opened in 1987. He's also written 17 cookbooks and had his own PBS show.
The Hearns and some friends won the dinner by bidding in the L'Eté du Vin charity auction, which benefits local agencies and charities in the fight against cancer. Don't know exactly what the final figure was, but it's undoubtedly big and bountiful.
Sorry, Charlie won't be cooking for you (or me) while he's here, but look for details of the party in the February issue of Nfocus, which comes out next week. Tip of the hat to Nfocus Editor Ellen Nelson for telling us about tonight's royal visit by one of the kings of American cuisine.
The bartender (James?) at Suzy Wong's House of Yum wore a great look: heather gray fitted T-shirt, cut a little low in front. "Love that shirt," I said between slugs of lychee martini (pictured, with the T-shirt in question in the background; I swear it's a coincidence).
"It's our uniform," he said. "Better than the one at the last place I worked, khakis and a shirt."
If you could trace the work server uniform from, say, the pink tunics over brown polyester trousers we Baskin-Robbins workers wore, past the Hooters costume, you'd eventually arrive at the steakhouse casual khakis-and-collared-shirt outfit that is sometimes so close to what the patrons are wearing that you might accidentally ask a likely-looking young diner where the ladies room is.
Has Suzy Wong's shaken off the old idea of "uniform" to hit a new level of stylishness and hawtness? Or has it found a new level of casualness? More important, does this mean the servers will be in hawt enough condition to wear The Shirt?
While slurping a pumpkin-and-spice-infused Peregrino at Crema this morning, I was chitchatting with Rachel Lehman about the recipes for her two new autumnal coffee drinks.
The Peregrino thickens coffee with actual pumpkin pulp and adds a medley of cinnamon, clove, orange zest and nutmeg for a soothing seasonal sipper.
The Lavender Macchiato, on the other hand, relies on fresh herb flavoring, which begged the question of how to best make an herb-infused simple syrup.
Rachel and I were bandying recipes back and forth, when she deferred to a customer who walked in the front door. None other than Patterson House owner Ben Goldberg was stopping by Lehman's Hermitage Avenue establishment for his morning cuppa. Who better than Goldberg, whose midtown speakeasy makes all its bitters, tinctures and syrups in house, often from herbs grown in the back courtyard.
Of course, I was so flustered by the small-world encounter that I forgot to ask him whether he would recommend muddling the herbs first, then boiling, or just boiling alone. Instead, we made a lunch date for later today at Gabby's Burgers & Fries, where I'll get to the bottom of the muddling business. Stay tuned.
Provence Breads & Cafe owner Terry Carr-Hall had the nerve to forward a link to his online photo album from Paris, where he is currently basking in the glow of stinky cheeses and bejeweled pastries. (How's that for a botched metaphor?)
Terry, thanks for the gorgeous glimpse, you lucky bâtard. I hope you come back fat, fat, fat.
Your mother always warned you about gambling, and this is exactly why.
City House owner Tandy Wilson made a bet with a co-worker on the Tennessee/Auburn game, and you can see who won the bet. After the Vols lost a close one, Tandy had to work his whole shift last night with the Auburn team name emblazoned on his forehead. He took it in stride, and was gracious enough to allow Bites to take a picture. (Pardon the quality. It's an iPhone photo.)
Even with magic marker on his forehead, the man still makes a mean pizza. In fact, the whole meal was fabulous. Padrón peppers with a sardine/bread crumb topping, some delightful chicken wings with chef Aaron's top-secret Alabama sauce, and the exceptionally tasty aforementioned pie, topped with zampina (house-made Italian sausage), fennel and pecorino.
If you've never been to City House, make it a priority. It's one of the most imaginative, delightful and consistent restaurants in town. And, unlike most of the city's best eateries, it's open on Sunday night!
Next time the person serving your artichoke pesto has a matching artichoke tattoo on her forearm, say hello to chef Julia Helton, who recently took up residence at Provence Breads & Cafe, as executive chef for the locally owned five-store bakery chain.
A former co-owner of Family Wash, whose résumé includes Whole Foods' Grill at Green Hills and Mitchell Deli in East Nashville, Helton will work predominantly at the Hillsboro Village location, where she will oversee the production of the savory side of Provence's European-inspired menu.
A self-professed "cheese whore" who lived in France for a year, Helton will work with owner Terry Carr-Hall and director of operations Kim Totzke to develop a repertoire that is "more old school French and less sandwich shop," with features such as polenta pizzas and crustless quiches. She is beefing up the cheese case, adding local chèvre--as well as 2 oz. packs of foie gras ($9)--and expects to collaborate with pastry chef Megan Williams to create a line of savory tarts.
Top tip for party planners: Invite Marne Duke to your potluck. The local food booster and former head of marketing for the Nashville Farmers' Market just might present you with a gorgeous mountain of open-face sandwiches like the platter pictured here.
For this seasonal appetizer, Marne piled soft rounds of Silke's bread from Clarksville (purchased at the Turnip Truck) with fresh homemade ricotta from a friend in East Nashville and canned peaches from the Farmers' Market.
If you invite Marne to your fête, she just might reciprocate with an invitation to a canning party, like the one where she--along with Friends of the Nashville Farmers' Market founder Jennifer Hagan-Dier, Slow Food Nashville director Robin Riddell and Caroline Trost--put up more 60 pounds of local produce.
"The peaches look like beautiful plump babies' bottoms when they are done," Marne said. "And it only took a few hours after work one day to make sure I can make yummy peach cobbler in January. I know that makes me officially old in some way. Next thing I'll be bragging on my knitting party that was off the hook!"
I like Julia Child, enough to interview her twice and cook from a couple of her books. I love that she's the unlikeliest food icon -- that pleases me for so many different reasons. But not every story is compelling enough to become a film.
Sheila Lukins, one-time proprietor of the 165-square-foot-shop Manhattan takeout shop The Silver Palate and author of several cookbooks, has died at age 66 of brain cancer.
She and business partner Julie Rosso opened the shop in 1977, selling cocktail fare, salads, pastas, side dishes, cookies and mousses. They also catered, and made sauces and preserves. Their food incorporated a wider world of flavors, including Greek, northern Mediterranean, Provencal, and rustic Italian. It wasn't just a store -- it was a force for cultural change, and soon the need for a cookbook was obvious.
The Silver Palate Cookbook was published by Workman publishing in 1980. Many Americans discovered pesto, fresh mozzarella, balsamic vinegar and arugula in its pages. It's been referred to as the "Joy of Cooking for a new generation of American cooks."
Its best-known recipe is Chicken Marbella, a marinated combination of unlikeliest ingredients (prunes, olives, 1/4 cup of oregano, brown sugar) that cooked into an irresistibly garlicky, sweet-tangy caramelized sauce.
Chef Ashley Quick has joined the team at Flyte World Dining & Wine, where he has been polishing the menu with chef Jen Franzen and pastry chef Erica Waksmunski for the past month. Quick brings a global résumé to the Eighth Avenue eatery, including stints at The Fat Duck in England, Clio in Boston and Bouchon in Napa.
Most recently, Quick was executive chef at Bistro 360. He has also worked with chef Tyler Brown at the Hermitage Hotel's Capitol Grille and at the exquisite but short-lived Andrew Chadwick's at Rutledge Hill.
Quick and Franzen will roll out a new fall menu on Sept. 22. In the meantime, the current menu reflects early input from Quick and is available after the jump.
At first the rain split the tomatoes, which healed over with unsightly cracks that could be cut away, so the tomatoes were usable. Later in the season, nearly ripe tomatoes all looked as if a rotten patch was forming around a spot that might or might not have been nibbled by one of the many creatures that visit our kitchen garden.
Then I saw that even Martha Stewart and her 50 varieties of tomatoes have the blight. I didn't feel better for either of us. It also doesn't get my tomatoes back. But it does make me feel better that the "good" half of a tomato I salvaged, stuffed with crabmeat and ate wasn't bitten by a creature.
Commenter Ryan B. noted a certain Scene writer's fascination with the idea of salted caramel ice cream. He made a batch, and, in an example we certainly hope sets an example, brought it to the offices of the Nashville Scene.
I just happened to be in the neighborhood. Just happened. And I can tell you that salted caramel ice cream is sheer madness, and madly good. The rich caramel drapes itself over the buttery bolster of heavy cream, decorated with the occasional flake of sea salt. Every bite is like sinking into a butterscotch velvet down-filled sofa.
I just happened to be in the neighborhood again the next day. I know--what are the chances?--so I had it again for breakfast!
Thanks, Ryan B, for the ice cream--and for an inspiration. With a neighborhood fig tree bent over with figs, we're thinking fig ice cream with a salted caramel swirl. Can you share the ice cream recipe?
Tonight begins the four episode final arc of this season's abbreviated Top Chef Masters competition. Unlike the regular Top Chef, which is populated with some creative up-and-comers, or the frightening Hell's Kitchen, whose contestants often look like they couldn't boil water, TCM brings the heat every week. What began with 24 renowned chefs is down to the six semi-finalists.
The final sextet is made up of more than just celebrity cheftestants. These folks can really cook! Most of them own and run multiple restaurants and have displayed a creative coolness under fire during the show that place them head and shoulders above your normal television recipe wrangler.
The final six are:
- Hubert Keller
- Suzanne Tracht
- Rick Bayless
- Anita Lo
- Art Smith
- Michael Chiarello
One of the chefs will be eliminated each week for the next month until the last two face off for the title of Top Chef Master (or Mistress). There's some internet rumor-mongering going around that some SF Bay food writer has already leaked the name of the winner, but you won't hear that from me.
Who do you think will bring home the bacon and win $100,000 for their favorite charity?
According to Food Network editors, "We were swimming in seafood recipes after we announced that the secret ingredient for our February/March 2009 contest was citrus. We got 20 entries for orange salmon alone! But only one dish had judges talking Iron Chef: Jeff Ockerman's scallop ceviche."
Director of Health Planning for the State of Tennessee and an adjunct professor of law at Vanderbilt University, Ockerman got the nudge to enter the contest from his 83-year old mother.
"She handed me this magazine in mid-March after I drove her and my father back home from a Florida vacation, saying 'Here, this might interest you,' " Ockerman says. "Even though I decided on the recipe quickly, I was fairly analytical. I thought of three criteria that I'd use if I were a judge: When would the winning recipe likely be printed? What's an unusual dish that's easy to make? What unexpected ingredient would make the judges notice this recipe?
"The idea of a ceviche just popped into my head; it's an interesting-sounding dish and it's very easy--mainly chopping vegetables. I had some candied citrus peel in the fridge that I'd made earlier, and I thought putting something usually used for jams and baking in a scallops-vegetable dish would attract the judges' eyes. And because the lime juice makes it so acidic, I added the citrus syrup."
Meanwhile, ice cream maven Jenny Piper has also caught the eye of a company that sells ice cream ingredients and asked her to develop a recipe showcasing their black walnuts. Through July 31, you can get 50 cents off Pied Piper's new Apple Pie ice cream, featuring caramelized black walnuts, if you download the coupon here.
Through the arrangement with Missouri-based Hammons Products Company, Piper has a bottomless bag of black walnuts to experiment with--many of which come from Middle Tennessee. She arrived at a formula for tossing the nuts in honey and baking them until they're candied. "Black walnuts are really expensive," Piper explains, "so for me to have an unlimited supply to play with has been really fun." (The price of Apple Pie ice cream is the same as her 24 other flavors.)
You can also take a survey about the new ice cream to qualify for a drawing a for a free video camera, courtesy of Hammons.
Waitin' on that first cup of coffee at Noshville, Green Hills.
So many things about Noshville are lovable. The cheery, functional retro interior. The great smells coming from the kitchen. The generous portions. The potato pancakes, the nova, the Reuben, the chicken soup with the giant matzo ball. They get it right pretty much every time, and I don't really know how they are so consistently good.
One other endearing quality of the Green Hills location: on weekends, the tables are full of scruffy, puffy-faced affluent West Nashvillians who look as if they just rolled out of bed. Dirty hair, bed hair, flip-flops, mingy teeth, sweats, gym shorts. I can't think of anywhere else where you'll see this many rumpled adult bourgeoisie. Okay, maybe Starbucks. Also Bread & Company. Where else?
Cooking is hazardous duty. As proof, a sampling of cooking injury photos shot over just two days.
That pink crescent is the burn inflicted by the hot oven rack when the cook reaches in to retrieve a pan and her/his arm doesn't clear the rack above.
In three gatherings over two days, about 10 percent of attendees had a cooking-related injury, most of them burns (but one involving hot liquid and a bruise). Clearly the situation cries for a solution. Just brainstorming, here are some, from low-tech to high-tech.
1) Remove the extra oven racks before the oven is hot
2) Position racks lower in the oven
3) Elbow-length oven gloves
4) Heat-proof ceramic oven racks.
What other solutions can Bites readers imagineer to this unseen epidemic?
A few weeks back, West Coast e-zine writer Michelle Strashoon, stopped in to get a taste of Nashville. Gaylord chef Forrest Parker squired Strashoon around one day, and Arnold Myint hosted her the next. Between the two of them, Myint and Parker gave Strashoon a lightning tour of the city, with culinary highlights including Cupcake Collection, Swett's, City House, Zola, tayst, ChaChah, Las Paletas, Rumours East, Watermark, Patterson House, Mirror and the Opryland compound.
Strashoon chronicled her visit in this month's issue of online magazine Hip Compass Escapes, which is available to subscribers. You can get a free glimpse of the story here. The Nashville section starts on page 62.
Where would you have taken an out-of-town journalist?
Insecure Walrus returns, and the time has come to talk about Indian things--Bombay Bistro in particular. The Walrus, a.k.a. Samuel Harrison, turns his vlogging skills to the new Indian eatery in Cool Springs. From the man who brought you Wild Ginger and Taste of Russia comes another endearingly unscripted--and uncharacteristically thorough--assessment of another Williamson County eatery.
"Thumbs up," says the Nashville Scene. "Walrus' most ambitious film to date is a triumph of extemporaneous banter and makeshift videography. The sweeping views of Carothers Parkway, still shots of deep-fried noshes and the lyric mispronunciations of Indian street foods make this 10-minute single-take nothing less than the Slumdog Millionaire of video food reviews."
[Ed. note: This post may only be tangentially food-related, but I can just about guarantee there was drink involved.]
One of the best things about The City Paper/Nashville Post's new sparkly, glossy larger format is that there is more room in the back for the eight pages of legal notices. Nestled among all the foreclosures and substitute trustee notices (yawn) was this little gem.
Apparently a certain "T.R." residing in West Allis, Wisconsin, is petitioning for the termination of parental rights of her little bundle of joy, "M.J.R." The rub is that she's not exactly sure who the father is.
What she is certain of, according to the legal notice, is that the physical description of the alleged parent is, "Caucasian, appearing to be age 18 to 21, blonde or brown hair" and that the details of the conception were sometime in "Mid-August 2008" in "Nashville, TN- house party-address unknown."
So if you're the baby daddy and you vaguely remember "T.R." better than she remembers you, do the right thing and man up about your parental responsibility. For the rest of you all, it is officially house party/cookout/apartment complex kegger hook-up season. Please do your part and drink responsibly and don't forget to wrap your Whopper.
This week, a familiar voice on Bites moves from the comments section to the front page, so to speak. Chris Chamberlain, a.k.a. CeeElCee, joins the Scene's food blog as a regular contributor.
A native Nashvillian, serious cook and inveterate gear-head, Chamberlain brings a gadget-lover's perspective and a Twitter-er's terse wit to the table. Of an age that puts him smack-dab between Virago hipsters and Sperry's early bird diners, Chamberlain resides in Hillsboro Village but will cross the county--and the river--in search of good, cheap Moldavian wine and vegetarian slaw dogs.
In his own words, his turn-ons include smoke applied liberally to pork and pork applied liberally to mass transit issues. Turn-offs? Anonymous comment trolls and having to eat in a chain steakhouse when traveling on business. Chamberlain is a frequent contributor to the Scene's You Are So Nashville If contest, and an occasional scribe for Nashville Lifestyles magazine, geardiary.com, MetBlogs Nashville, Music City Bloggers, MakingItRain, TheDrySpot.net and several other places that return an error 404 if you go looking for them.
Stay tuned for Chamberlain's meaty commentary and prosaic bloggerel. Welcome to Bites, CeeElCee.
I don't watch food and cooking TV, because it's not really about food.
If it were about food, I might be tempted, but it usually isn't. Instead, it's about competition, or aspirational home-keeping a la Martha Stewart, or vicarious dream vacations.
Or something more intimate. As proof, I offer this montage of Perky Every-Eater Rachel Ray really, really enjoying her meal.
Suburban scavenging dilemma from our faithful commenter Lesley. Just look at this exuberantly leafy plant of the cucurbitae family, bursting with good health, flinging foliage here and yon, tossing out pretty blossoms, and just the beginnings of something good--zucchini? yellow squash?
Tragically, ironically, unfortunately and all the other adverbs that fit here, that plant and a half-dozen others are growing in some mulch flung down behind a warehouse at her workplace. Her own vegetable plants, meanwhile, are doing what mine are doing: languishing as snail fodder. She wants those zucchini. Should she pick them, at the risk that the soil under them is Midnight Mulch, which I've generally been told to avoid in vegetable gardens? Or maybe she should she transplant the plants? Or should she just buy zucchini at Whole Foods and wait for her own crop to ripen?
Spread the word -- chocolate, peanut butter and caramel taste great together.
If we talked last night at Iron Fork, I doubtless gushed about this four-flavored leviathan of delectability, a juggernaut of deliciousness, the zenith of sugar creations.
It came from Chaffin's Barn, of all places, which I confess isn't on my regular dining rounds. Coming to Iron Fork definitely put Chaffin's on the radar, highlighting the culinary skill of executive chef Kim Ingram. Her shamelessly rich miniature fudgie cakes with a peanut butter center get a ladle of hot caramel sauce that softens the cake and peanut butter. A scoop of her roasted banana ice cream cuts the richness with a bracing bit of fruit. It's got the elemental appeal of a candy bar, or a sundae. I was able to restrain myself from eating two of them.
Kim was an interesting person, as well, having left a job at the Department of Justice to return to culinary school. If you're looking to change careers, there are worse places to end up than a restaurant kitchen, especially if you get to turn out Chocolate Peanut Caramel Banana Bombastics.
Anyway, I tried so many good things last night, and had a great time watching the chefs compete, and watching Jim and Carrington make a seamless narration out of the competition. So, what'd you eat that was good?
B----, please! put away that camera or my peeps will have to hurt you.
Here's tayst chef Jeremy Barlow on his way to a hugely attended cooking demonstration at last weekend's grand reopening of Market House at the Farmer's Market. I couldn't get a seat close enough to hear what he was preparing -- did anyone else catch it?
Recognize this guy pictured in a story at ParkRecord.com? That's Jason Brumm, chef/owner of Radius10, which closed its Gulch doors in January. Brumm has since landed in Park City, Utah, where he is heading up the steak-heavy Butcher's Chop House and Bar.
I met a gifted baker this weekend. She could really pick a recipe -- a gift in itself -- and she could truly execute.
Her name was Beth, she was from Chickasaw, Georgia, and her cookie tray consisted of a beautifully textured dark chocolate rocky road brownie that was just sweet enough, and punctuated by marshmallows. Lemon sandwich cookies that were well-shaped with a refined flavor. And a deceptively plain-looking browned butter cookie that is simply devastating.
This cookie is a test.There are people who can't distinguish looks from substance. This cookie will weed them out, because it's not much to look at, though the icing helps. A shallow person will go for the flashier cookie. And it will probably meet their expectations.
At the darkly delicious basis of this cookie is browned butter, which seems to me to be the caramelized onion of the baking world: it's the magic touch that makes every food taste great.
I asked for the recipe and she said It's on All Recipes. So now I pass it along to you, because you're the kind of person who appreciates inner beauty.
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