Cooking With Ideas

Billsboro + Opus = Yummy!

One Friday evening off we went to Billsboro Winery for their "happy hour." Wines by - you guessed it, Billsboro. And food by the new place in town: Opus, which is on Exchange Street at 486 Exchange, and that Friday was catering at Billsboro. (Here's the Opus Facebook page.) The music was hip and fun, the pinot noir dandy, and the food was swell. We had a taco trio -- mmmmm. Taco Number 1 (or should I say numero uno?) was pork very lovely and brasied I think, certainly slow cooked, with provolone. Taco 2 was a sausage from Madia's made with Billsboro wine and served with a lightly curried sort of pickled cabbage slaw. Taco 3 -- turkey mole with cheddar. You ate them in the order the chef recommended - and the heat went up as the spiciness went up -- and wow. They were great. And they did indeed go well with the Billsboro pinot noir as did the sort of salted caramel brownie thingie. The wine was just the right balance of light, fruity and dry for the food.

The setting, too, was great -- a sort of rustic big room down Route 14 from Geneva -- with some great art for sale on the walls. Not bad acoustics and comfie stools to hang around on.

The chef, Heather Tompkins. . . . formerly of Halsey's and then Fox Run, now running her own place (with Chelsea Madia) -- Opus

The wine, Billsboro.

The evening. Totally fun.

Ad Hoc -- Cooking from a Wonderful Cookbook

So, I was in the kitchen with a cookbook I got some time ago as a gift (thanks very very much) -- a cookbook by my fantasy go-to-his-restaurant fave, Thomas Keller. The cookbook: Ad Hoc -- and I have had it for some time. (For a review, click here.) It has lovely looking things in it - a sort of home cooking meets THOMAS KELLER -- and turns life into wonders that I imagined smelling delightful. My imagination, for once, was right. How do I know? I tried one of the recipes recently: crisy chicken braised with olives, fennel and lemon. Here's how to do it:

*Buy chicken thighs (I had 8, recipe calls for 12) and whatever else you need (including olives, fennel, chicken stock if you are lazy like I am, onion, etcetera).

*Crisp the chicken skin by searing the chicken thighs for 4 or so minutes on the skin side and one on the non-skin side, and then remove the chicken from the pan for a bit. I used a tad of canola oil to get the party going. 

*Saute one cup of roughly chopped onions and a tablespoon of garlic in the chicken fat. Then add fennel (in batons) and cook for a while (maybe 8010 minutes) and then add some white wine and chicken stock. Add, as well, a bit of red pepper flakes, 4 big peelings of lemon, and the a cup of olives. (The latter was a puzzle. The recipe called for a cup; it did not say pitted or not, so I pitted half and left half unpitted. It called for big green cerignola olives -- and I could not find those, so I bought half red and half black cerignola olives). Cook for a while til everything is lovely.

*Put the chicken back into the pan, on top, skin side up, and pop in a 375 oven. The recipe called for 20 minutes "Or until done." It took a LOT longer that 20 minutes. Once chicken done, pop under broiler to recrisp the chicken skin (because the recipe says so and because what is better in the world than chicken skin crisped up and crunchy? Well, maybe bacon some days, but this is not a bacon story).

What happens after all this -- you get a lovely sauce, wonderful sweetish/moist chicken thighs, and fennel that is to die for, melting away in your mouth. Not to mention the slight salinity of the olives. Sprinkle parsley leaves on top when you serve it. Yes, very good and thanks to Thomas Keller. 

We often say -- why go out to eat when. . . . and this was one of those evenings. Yes, I would like to try a Thomas Keller restaurant -- perhaps even Ad Hoc -- but meanwhile, the cookbook plus moi -- and good company! Hurrah!

What did I serve it with? A farro salad concocted from the back of the farro package which I happened to find in the grocery store (in what seemed obviously the wrong place). It was 2 cups of cooked farro, a smallish butternut squash chopped into bit size pieces and roasted with olive oil, thyme, and red onion, and then all mixed with the farro and some butternut squash seed oil and goat cheese.

Mmmmm.No dessert. Too full.

Want a video of Thomas Keller? Click here.

Do You Love. . . Bacon?

Despite a comment or two asking me to write on healthy topics, well, I confess. I am not going to hear. I am going to write about. . . bacon. I love bacon. More generally, I love pork. I confess. I do. In almost any form (though I do have some trouble with offal and . . . . ). But, I love pork and I especially love bacon. I used to say that I could only eat it when I was traveling as it is (of course) unhealthy. But hey, I just eat it. I do. (Not to mention pork belly and. . . .) And yes, all this reveals many religions that I do NOT practice.

The excuse for this rant on my love for bacon? A book with a perfect title: I Love Bacon. Written by Jayne Rockmill (and published by Andrews McMeel who sent it to me for free), the cookbook brings together bacon uses for every single possible course in a meal. The recipes come from various chefs (and thus various restaurants) and range across such possibilities as:

**chocolate-bacon cupcakes (trust me; I have had bacon chocolate bars that are wonderful)

**bacorn (bacon-caramel popcorn with chile-spiked peanuts)

to somewhat more traditional possibilities like bluefish with corn, avocado and bacon salad, and more fusion-like options such as crispy pork belly stir-fry with rice noodles and thai basil. The cookbook teaches you how to transform pork belly into bacon in both classic forms, spicy braised forms, and soy-ginger forms. This is a very dangerous book.

Besides being entitled I Love Bacon -- and featuring bacon recipes of all sorts of wonders -- part of the book's proceeds go to the Food Bank of New York City and Share Our Strength.

For an interview with Jayne Rockmill, click here. for a review on a website we all should know about (The Republic of Bacon), click here. And there are so so so so many blogs on bacon as a food, it was hard to choose. Did you know there was a word (yep, neologism) baconista? (It is associated with this blog.) Anyway, this blog is anpother one I actually found less overwhelming than too many of the others; why be overwhelmed? Eat bacon. Or pork belly. Or. . . .

And don't feel guilty (as I do), check out this site arguing it might be . . . healthy??!???!?!?!

Eating out in Atlanta -- or an Abbatoir by Any Other Name. . .

Abattoir is another word for . . . . slaugghterhouse. Yep. Where animals become meat. Where they are killed. Yep. And yet. . . . while that is what this wikipedia article is about, what this little essay is about is a restaurant in Atlanta. It's name? Abattoir. And no, they do not just serve meat, though they definitely serve meat.And yes, it is located in part of what used to be a meat packing plant.

First, the ambience. Located in a sort of out of the way midtown location that seems to be in the midst of a sort of arehouse gentrification, Abattoir is a huge building that seems like it should be echo-y. Not so much. It is a cross between elegant and . . . . cement floors. The menus included all sorts of food in jars (we ordered kim chee -- see below), variously prepared offal (I lost my nerve; again see below), and drinks, and desserts and more. All in all -- the place smelled great, the food was dandy, and it was -- not so expensive!

Among the things we had: pork crackling type things called crispy fried pork fritters that turned out to be light and lovely. They were accompanied with a sort of pepper relish. Mmmmm. And we also had some sausage to start. And then we -- well, we could not decide -- so we let the waiter decide. So we had some sort of pork belly entree (shared). Wow. Not to mention the kimchee -- we consumed an entire bottle and then bought one to go (which, alas, leaked in the suitcase on the way home, but that is a tale for another day -- maybe never). And we had drinks and wine and a cheese course with dandy cheeses. And dessert. Chess pie. And yes, I got a bacon cookie that was supposed to come with some other dessert but we talked them in to one on the side. Bacon is, truly, good with virtually anything. Mmmm. We ate. A lot. We drank pretty darn much too from a nice wine list and mixed drinks (which were not so powerful as to ruin dinner). I think I had a japalac. We did all this for a total of $150. (Okay, plus tip. But the total included drinks for 3 people we knew who were several tables away.) It was amazing. The menu changes -- as it is local and organic and all that. But the relevant menu is not badly represented by that on their web site or by those available (for example) at urban spoon, which you can get to by clicking below.

For Yelp reviews, click here. And for another, click here -- which among other things let's you know that one of the lead chefs is a woman. And just google away -- there are loads of reviews. None will quite match up to the experience -- but if you are in Atlanta -- try it!

Address: 1170 Howell Mill Road, Atlanta, Georgia