Your Grand Tasting strategy for today

Posted on October 5, 2019 by Burnt My Fingers
Grand Tasting Wine Pour

Get ready for some excellent sampling and imbibing at today’s Grand Tasting of the Saratoga Wine & Food Festival.

Today, October 5, is the Grand Tasting of the Saratoga Wine & Food Festival. The VIP portion (sold out) starts at 11 with general admission (tickets still available) at noon. At last night’s elegant dinner, both the weather and the crowds were exceptionally well behaved. Hopefully the same will hold true today, but it can’t hurt to share a few pointers we came up with for prior events:

  1. Arrive early. The crowds are likely to get thicker as the event goes on, and many of the most popular stations may run out of food. Why chance it? There’s likely to be a backup at the gate when the event opens, so 15 minutes after is just right.

  2. Head for the back of the tent. People tend to gravitate to the first thing they see once they get inside, so those first few stations will be mobbed. Walk right past and head for the rear wall. Remember, when you’re standing in line you’re not eating/drinking (unless you’ve brought something from another station, which doesn’t seem a proper thing to do).

  3. Eat before drinking. The food is likely to run out first. Plus, not a bad idea to coat your stomach before pounding beer/wine/hard liquor.

  4. Have a liquor strategy. You can’t drink everything and don’t want to since quality is likely to vary widely. Decide on a particular drink category and stick to that. Coming off the first overnight freeze of the season, I’m going to look for toddies and similar warming concoctions.

  5. Wear dark clothes. Should have put this first. You are inevitably going to spill something at some point so be prepared. And if you get through the afternoon without an accident, give yourself a high five at the end.

  6. Study the map, assuming there will be a map of some kind. You don’t want to miss out on a participating restaurant or beverage distributor because you couldn’t find them or didn’t know they were there.

  7. Take Lyft or Uber, or have a designated driver. This is a Wine & Food Festival, after all, with unlimited pours of some very good stuff. Don’t have a bad end to a perfect day.

Elizabeth Sobol and crew seem to have done a magnificent job in planning the new format, so the above admonitions may not be necessary. But they can’t hurt. See you there (by the Reflecting Pool) at Spa Park.

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An Ayurvedic chef and much more at Saratoga Wine & Food Festival

Posted on October 3, 2019 by Burnt My Fingers
Wine Pour Saratoga

There will be plenty of wine to sample at Saturday’s Grand Tasting at the Saratoga Wine & Food Festival. Photo by Bigler Productions.

This weekend’s Saratoga Wine & Food Festival got off to a fast start with a good crowd at the Ayurvedic cooking demo on Tuesday night; details below. As promised, here’s a list of the chefs who will be participating in this weekend’s events. The Friday event is sold out as of this date but a waitlist is available; get your tickets now for Saturday to avoid a sellout of that as well.

New to 2019 festival is the “Forest Magic” Farm-to-Table Harvest Dinner, curated by Kim Klopstock of Lily and the Rose in collaboration with John Sconzo of Rascal & Thorn and local progressive chefs Dan Spitz of Fat N Happy LLC, Yaddo’s head chef Michael Blake, and Kevin London, owner of Farmhouse Restaurant at Top of the World. Pairing the region’s top talent with national chefs Diego Moya, Executive Chef of Racines in NYC, rated one of America’s 100 Best Wine Restaurants of 2019 by Wine Enthusiast, and Austin Peltier, an expert on Ayurvedic cooking practices, the teams of two will each present a course that incorporates sustainable and locally sourced ingredients. This event is currently sold out; to add yourself to the waitlist call the SPAC Box Office at 518.584.9330 x135.

Highlighting the weekend destination event are farm-to-table chefs Tim Spedding and Louise Rødkjær Jørgensen from Britain who will utilize some of the best local produce for Friday’s VIP Farm-to-Table Harvest Dinner and prepare canapés for the VIP Grand Tasting. Tim Spedding is recognized as one of the UK’s most exciting and influential young chefs. Together with his partner Louise Rødkjær Jørgensen, the pair plans to open their own restaurant and inn in the beautiful Cornwall countryside focusing on farm-to-table cuisine.

Chef Adam Peltier presents Ayurvedic diet concepts at Cultivate event in Skidmore’s Falstaff Hall.

We attended the “Cultivate” demo with Austin Peltier earlier this week and can predict you are in for a treat when you taste his cooking. He gave us a quick overview of the principles of the Ayurvedic diet and served us roasted sweet potatoes which had been prepared with three different palates of flavor and ingredients to correspond to different aspects of Ayurvedic diet (Vatta, Pitta, Kapha); they tasted delicious rather than medicinal. Looking forward to a truly outstanding experience this weekend.

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Recipe: Shime Saba (pickled sushi-style mackerel)

Posted on October 1, 2019 by Burnt My Fingers
Saba on Shiso

Shime Saba recipe results, in a shiso burrito.

Shime Saba means, literally, shiny mackerel. This saba recipe is very easy to make at home and the taste will be close to what you enjoy in a quality sushi bar. The visuals? Not so much, until you practice filleting, removing the silverskin and picking out the little bones a lot more than we did. But you can roll it up in a shiso leaf for a saba burrito, and the flavor will be so good you won’t care what it looks like. Makes four appetizer servings.

Ingredients:
1 very fresh mackerel, typically a bit under a pound
Kosher salt
Rice wine vinegar

Saba Fillets

Our saba fillets were not sushi-chef quality, but serviceable.

Method: fillet the fish (or have your fishmonger do it) and discard head, tail, fins and backbone. Coat both sides of each filet with salt (use more than you think you need) and lay flat in a container in refrigerator for one hour. Carefully rinse the salt off the fish (this source suggests you dip it in a bowl of water) and pat it dry with paper towels; rinse the container. Return the fish to the container and cover with rice wine vinegar. Marinate 2 hours, turning the fish at the halfway point. Discard vinegar and pat the fish dry.

Removing Saba Silverskin

Removing saba silverskin.

Before serving, you need to remove the inedible silverskin which is a thin top layer above the shiny exterior skin. Find a place where you can get a grip on it near the front of the filet and pull down (toward the belly) and back. Hopefully you can get it off in one piece. You also need to pick out some fine bones which are hidden in the backbone area; I couldn’t locate them in the whole filet and had to pick them out after I had sliced the saba into individual pieces.

To serve, slice top-to-bottom into ½ inch thick slices. If you’ve done a good clean job filleting you can cut at an angle to expose more flesh; otherwise cut straight down. Serve on sushi rice as nigiri, or eat plain with a garnish of shiso leaves.

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Saratoga Wine & Food Festival reinvents itself

Posted on September 26, 2019 by Burnt My Fingers
SPAC Reflecting Pool

This year’s SPAC Wine & Food Festival will take place around the Rellecting Pool. Photo courtesy of Bigler Productions.

We’ve reported from time to time on the Saratoga Wine & Food Festival, an event on the grounds of SPAC that used to happen the weekend after Labor Day. Watching Zak Pelaccio break down a pig, a burger bash in which fine dining chefs attempted to outdo one another, seeing Ric Orlando cook up shrimp and grits and getting his recipe are some of our favorite memories. In recent years, however, the festival got a bit lazy with fewer side events and athletes replacing celebrity chefs as the top attraction.

No longer. Saratoga Performing Arts Center President & CEO Elizabeth Sobol has thrown the rule book out the window, starting with moving the date to leaf-peeping season on October 4 and 5 and the venue to the dramatic Reflecting Pool outside the Hall of Springs. Although admission is not cheap—this is SPAC’s main fundraising event of the year, after all—there are some fascinating preview presentations you can attend at no charge.

The “Cultivate Series” kicks off on October 1 with talks and presentations by Soul Fire Farm co-founder, author, activist and farmer Leah Penniman; author of Fasting and Feasting Adam Federman, and Ayurvedic expert and classically trained chef Austin Peltier. The events are presented in partnership with Pitney Meadows Community Farm and Skidmore College. Admission is free, but space is limited so reservations are highly recommended. Tickets here.

Chef at SPAC Wine & Food Festival

The Festival will feature chef-prepared specialties made with local and sustainable ingredients. Photo courtesy of Bigler Productions.

If that whets your appetite, you can head on over to the “Forest Magic” Farm-to-Table Harvest on Friday night, curated by Kim Klopstock of Lily and the Rose in collaboration with John Sconzo of Rascal & Thorn and a number of top chefs we’ll highlight in another post. Teams of two chefs will each present a course that incorporates sustainable and locally sourced ingredients. We volunteered earlier this summer at the Pitney Meadows Fire Feast, also a collaboration involving Klopstock and Sconzo, and predict this will be special. Tickets here.

The Grand Tasting will return on Saturday, October 5, though without the display of classic cars that made for an upscale but odd pairing in previous years. Still more celebrity chefs will be on hand preparing dishes to sample, along with so many representatives of local restaurants and beverage purveyors that you’ll need a strategic plan (which we’ll share in our next post) to get through it all. The Grand Tasting will also feature a sculpture garden curated by The Hyde Collection in Glens Falls, and live music sponsored by Caffè Lena. Tickets here.

SPAC’s Sobol sums it up: “The underlying ethos of this year’s festival is socially-conscious cultivation and consumption. Pairing in-demand international talent with our progressive regional chefs gives our community the opportunity to experience exquisite culinary artistry, incorporating local sustainable ingredients for a truly collaborative farm-to-table inspired event.”

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Our five most popular recipes of 2019

Posted on September 24, 2019 by Burnt My Fingers

September is the anniversary of this blog, and every year we report the most popular posts during the previous 12 months. We checked the non-recipe posts a couple weeks back; here are the five most popular recipes of 2019. Let’s go.

  1. Halal Guys White Sauce. No surprise here, since discussion of the intentionally misleading recipe clues from some foodie titans dwarfed other topics this past year. Here is the real deal, the actual recipe the Halal Guys use (well not exactly actual because they make it from scratch and we’re using mayo as a shortcut.)
  2. Amish Creamed Celery. This is a home-grown recipe developed right on this blog, informed by the sweet/sour cream sauces of the Pennsylvania Dutch tradition and the alleged Amish fascination with celery as a symbol of fertility. Also, it’s delicious.
  3. Vinegar Peppers. An essential ingredient in Chicken Riggies and other Utica-style Italian-American dishes. Prep couldn’t be easier and you’ll always be ready with a tart accent for your dishes.
  4. German-Style Head Cheese (Souse). We love this stuff and are impressed that a huge number of readers apparently have access to fresh pig’s heads. But if you are into pickled offal, please check out Amish-Style Pickled Tripe in Aspic which is a much more exciting breakthrough.
  5. Aji Roja. This is essentially Peruvian ketchup: a well-balanced tomato-based sauce you can serve on a variety of savory items. The Peruvians put it on beef heart; you can try it on burgers and hot dogs if you like.

So it seems our readers are offal-centric and avid for culinary details from the nether regions of our planet. Not a bad way to end up the year.  See our most popular non-recipe posts here.

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Recipe: Okra and Onions

Posted on September 19, 2019 by Burnt My Fingers
Okra and Onions

Okra and Onions

Reader Enough Already! pointed me to this simple and delicious recipe for Okra and Onions which originally appeared in the New York Times. It’s a great way to prepare squash or other late-season produce, as well as okra. Makes 4 servings.

Ingredients:
1 lb okra, stems removed and sliced in half lengthwise
1 medium onion, approximately 1 c, peeled and cut in half then sliced into halfmoons
3 T olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste
Shiso, mint or basil for garnish

Method: preheat oven to 400 degrees. Toss the okra and onions in olive oil then spread out on a cookie sheet. Roast 20 minutes, until onion is softened and okra is beginning to brown. Salt and pepper to taste then garnish with chopped herbs.

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Recipe: Schug Yemenite Green Sauce

Posted on September 17, 2019 by Burnt My Fingers
Schug

Schug, ready to work its magic

Try our schug recipe on your next falafel pita: a dollop of yoghurt sauce or Halal Guys White sauce, a schmear of schug and you’re in heaven. We concocted our schug recipe based on a version from Adeena Sussman, then tinkered till it was more well-rounded than simply volcanic so you can eat more of it without exploding. Makes 1 cup.

Ingredients:
1 c finely packed cilantro leaves, or parsley leaves, or a mixture, coarsely chopped
2 cloves garlic
1 jalapeño pepper, stemmed and chopped but with seeds and veins intact
½ t Kosher salt
½ t ground cumin
½ t ground cardamon
½ t ground black pepper
1 T lemon juice
1 T or more extra virgin olive oil

Method: combine all ingredients in a mini food processor and purée to a coarse grind–smooth but with distinct bits of leaves. It should be moist but without pooling olive oil; if too dry add another T olive oil and mix a bit more. Transferred to a container with a lid and let the flavors blend for 2 hours or more. Taste and add more salt if needed. Will keep a few days in the refrigerator.

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Recipe: Stewed Okra with Tomatoes

Posted on September 12, 2019 by Burnt My Fingers
Okra with Tomatoes

Stewed Okra with Tomatoes

Stewed Okra with Tomatoes is a universal preparation down south; households from Key West to Deep Ellum are making it right now as you read this recipe. This is comfort food, filling and mildly spiced, to be eaten alongside more assertive dishes. If you’re not a fan of okra slime, you can rest easy: it completely disappears as the vegetables are stewed. Makes 4 serving.

Ingredients:
2 c okra, stems removed and cut crosswise into ½ inch pieces
2 T bacon fat or neutral cooking oil
½ c chopped onion
½ c chopped celery
10-oz can RO-TEL Original Diced Tomatoes and Green Chilies* OR 14.5-oz can stewed tomatoes and ½ jalapeño, seeds and veins removed and coarsely chopped
½ c water (omit if using the larger can of stewed tomatoes vs RO*TEL)
Pinch of dried cumin (optional)
½ t salt (or more if needed)
½ t ground black pepper

Method: sauté onion and celery until limp; add other ingredients. Simmer 25 minutes until okra is soft. Finished product should be moist but not soupy; check after a few minutes and take the cover off the pot if there’s too much liquid, or add water if it is getting dry. Serve warm; tastes at least as good the next day.

*Not a product plug. RO-TEL tomatoes are a very popular southern ingredient but plain tomatoes with a bit of chile makes an okay substitute.

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Recipe: Niter Kibbeh (Ethiopian clarified butter)

Posted on September 10, 2019 by Burnt My Fingers
Niter Kibbeh

Niter Kibbeh, in solid and liquid forms

Niter Kibbeh is the cooking medium for many Ethiopian dishes, providing a flavorful undertone to more aggressive spices. It should be fragrant, herbaceous in taste but without the heat of berbere or other red pepper. The recipe is very flexible and can be modified for your preferences and your pantry. My version is based on Kittee Berns’ Ye’qimem Zeyet (spiced vegetable oil) in Teff Love with only minor tweaks. Makes a little less than a pint.

Ingredients:
1 lb unsalted butter
⅓ cup minced red onion or shallots
2 T garlic, chopped
1 T dried koseret OR Mexican oregano* (optional)
1 T dried besobela OR holy basil** (optional)
1 T peeled and grated fresh ginger
½ teaspoon whole ajwain seeds*** (optional) OR dried thyme leaves
½ teaspoon ground cardamom
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon whole fenugreek seeds
½ teaspoon ground turmeric
½ teaspoon whole nigella seeds (optional; see page 6)
6 fresh basil leaves (optional)
6 whole cloves
1/8 t grated nutmeg

Method: melt the butter in a heavy saucepan under very low heat; it should be barely bubbling when rendered. Add all other ingredient and simmer under very low heat for one hour, stirring occasionally to make sure the bottom is not getting too hot. Remove larger pieces of spices with a slotted spoon then strain through cheesecloth or paper towel into a clean, warm pint jar. Will keep quite a while in your refrigerator.

*Koseret is a flowering herb growing in mountainous regions of Ethiopia. You’ll probably have a hard time finding it unless you have access to a good African store. Mexican (not regular) oregano is from the same family so I’ve offered it as a replacement.

**Besobela tastes and smells like thyme mixed with lavender. It can be found in health food stores or bulk spice departments where it’s sold as tulsi or holy basil.

***Kittee Berns uses ajwain in a number of her recipes so it’s worth seeking out in a specialty spice department. Its bitter taste is similar to, but not the same as, dried thyme. Another name for ajwain is “bishop’s weed”; this is a very common invasive plant in the Northeast and I’d be interested if any readers have successfully harvested the seeds.

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Our five most popular non-recipe posts of 2019

Posted on September 5, 2019 by Burnt My Fingers

September is the anniversary of this blog, which means it’s time once again to peek at our stats and report the most popular posts of the past year. Let’s start with the five most popular non-recipe posts of 2019:

  1. The Halal Guys white sauce mystery… SOLVED! We predicted this would happen a year ago, and sure enough there’s been a daily drumbeat that finally totaled 13,403 views, far more than any other post on the blog. It’s worth noting that less than half of readers clicked through to read the actual recipe that solved the mystery… support for a theory that many people prefer arguing about food to actually eating it.

  2. The sauce that made Mr. Durkee famous. So much love for a product we eat (in my house anyway) only once a year. This is one of the oldest posts on the blog, and we recently cleaned up a number of broken links which made for a rise in Google rankings. Did Mrs. Lincoln actually invent Durkee’s while in the White House? Was it once made by a paint company? Read the post to find out!

  3. Hacking the Salt & Char Ribeye Cap Steak. In which we reproduce the signature dish of the very upscale Saratoga Springs steak house for preparation in your own home. David Burke, the new Executive Chef at Salt & Char, now makes the rib cap with Wagyu beef and charges $78 for a nine-oz portion. For the same amount of money you could buy a whole prime rib roast, cut off the cap, and essentially have a free entrée to serve for your holiday meal.

  4. What’s the best flour for baking bread? A perennial favorite because it answers a question any beginning baker has (or should have) and provokes discussion among more experienced bakers. Hint: it’s not the sacks of King Arthur Sir Galahad brand you see stacked up at your favorite bakery… or maybe it is.

  5. The cure for watery steak. Who knew this was such a problem? If you suffer from watery steak, here are two possible causes and two easy ways to fix it. Once you finish reading the post, check the “related” at the bottom of the page for other articles of interest on preparing red-meat magnificence. Seems like we hate to pay for steak, but we love writing about it!

Coming soon: the 5 most popular recipe posts of 2019.

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