Fun Playing with Jewish Soul Food for New Year's Day

Ahhh, the bagel. Jewish Soul Food. Despite its Eastern European origin, ubiquitous almost anywhere you go. We knew that we had a couple of packets of Bagel Boss belly lox in our freezer, so we decided to treat ourselves to a luxurious New Year's Day breakfast of bagel, cream cheese and lox. But would the bagel store even be open? Did we really want to schlep out to get them? Academic questions all, once Bob agreed to take a whack at making bagels for the first time. 

The first conundrum - which recipe to use? Internet choices abounded, and every one was a little different than the one before. I didn't have time to consult our shelf of cookbooks - so internet inspiration would have to do. 

The second issue - we didn't want to have to do the entire bread-making process on Saturday morning - could some be done in advance so all that remained for breakfast-making was the final bake (or a fraction thereof)? 

Here are the answers. We began the process during the day on Friday (New Year's Eve):

Bagel dough, consisting of bread (high gluten) flour, water, yeast, malt syrup, sugar, salt



Dough is shaped and rises.

Bagels are boiled in water, about 45 seconds per side. Bob used a chopstick through the hole to flip them. Our plan was to boil them all off, then par-bake half and leave the other half in the fridge to be fully baked the next morning. That way, we could determine in side-by-side fashion which time-saving method was superior.

This was intended to be only partially baked, but wound up fully cooked. Oh darn, guess we have to taste-test them now.

Topped with a schmear of Tempt-tee whipped cream cheese, the fresh bagel made a perfect afternoon nosh to hold us until New Year's Eve dinner, which was planned for 8:30pm.

I topped the other half with Harzler's roll butter. The first experiment had fabulous taste and crumb - but the overall texture seemed a bit too soft for an authentic "New York style" bagel.

Since the first bagel batch wound up fully baked a day early, we set them aside for Sunday, and went off to Restaurant Dante to enjoy New Year's Eve dinner with friends.

Saturday morning (Happy New Year!), we baked off the four bagels that we'd boiled the day before and held overnight in the refrigerator unbaked.

Interestingly, the holes at the center of the bagels closed up a lot, and the final products were a bit smaller than their immediately-baked brethren. Most important, though - the overnight stint in the fridge did something wonderful for the texture, which solidified to a perfect chewy bite. So - boiling then holding seems to win, at least with this recipe.

Bagel Boss Belly Lox (accept no substitutes for Belly Lox)


Sliced Onion

Jewish Soul Food Perfected - home-made bagel, sliced onion, Tempt-tee schmear, belly lox. Fun Playing with New Year's Day food - this, I could get used to. Happy New Year to all!

Fun Playing with Palate Pleasing Food

We've known Cleveland-area Chef Jeffrey Jarrett for almost five years and we are excited that Chef Jeff  has finally opened his own restaurant - Palate, in Strongsville.  After sous cheffing for Matthew Mathlage (The Leopard, Aurora Ohio and Light Bistro, Ohio City) and Dante Bocuse (Dante, Tremont), he most recently ran the kitchens at Lockkeepers in Valley View and  North End in Hudson. Even more important, he and his wife Tammy have five children - three by the normal methods (apologies to Harry Chapin) and two adopted from orphanages in China. Both of the adoptees are special needs children. Jasmine is vision impaired, and sweet Jewel completely blind. Jeff and Tammy (and their  three boys) are themselves very special for taking these two children into their hearts and home - it tells you something about the people behind the food at this particular restaurant. So, be aware before I even start my discussion of Palate, that I am biased in favor of Jeff.

Bob and I were excited to be invited to the Palate "Friends and Family" preview evening on Monday, December 27. My food blogging friend Tom had already made a reservation for us to dine at Palate on its "official" opening night that followed, so what follows is drawn from two nights' experience at Palate. (You can read Tom's description of our Palate dinner at Exploring Food My Way).

The tables are covered in white linen, and the front of the house does a fine job living up to those white tablecloths. Service is attentive and knowledgeable. Fresh cracked pepper was offered with each course as appropriate to the dishes ordered. The table was de-crumbed and silverware replaced as needed throughout dinner. Glasses were re-filled promptly. The dining experience is simply a delight.

Palate's menu presently contains six items each in the "small plates" and "greens/soups" categories, and 10 entree options. This presents the diner with choice, but not so much choice as to be overwhelmed. Even so, after two visits, we still haven't tasted everything that looked appealing on the menu.

Bread is made in house by Sous Chef Lauren Stephenson, and served with luxuriously soft butter.

citrus-cured hamachi, beets, horseradish cream, pickled red onion, lemon basil vinaigrette

The photo above is from our second dinner and represents two portions ($5 per portion).  I loved this dish both times I ate it - pristine fish and tender beets contrast with the pickled onions and horseradish creme. I loved every component on this plate, though I wanted more horseradish intensity in the creme. But then, we grow horseradish in our backyard.

buttermilk fried chicken livers, cheesy polenta, spiced honey, grilled scallion salad

The livers were very good - crunchy on the outside and gentle on the inside. I especially liked the creamy polenta, which paired marvelously with a bite of the liver and the spiced honey.

crab cake, corn flake, candied hot peppers, apple butter

This plate contains two pieces of the crab cake, which is served by the piece (like the hamachi, $5 per piece). I loved the candied hot peppers, which contrasted nicely with the crab meat.

soup of the moment

Tonight's soup was potato, bacon and cheese. Pure comfort food, well executed. 

fried goat cheese, roasted beets & apples, greens, cranberry honey gastrique

Bob and I shared this the first night, and Tom enjoyed it on Tuesday - it was one of my favorites. Crispy, yet creamy goat cheese patties top a salad that is bigger than it looks. Packed with texture from the beets and apples and intense flavor from the gastrique - I could eat a big plate of this for dinner and be a happy girl!

palate Caesar - romaine, dressing, brioche crouton, roasted garlic/parmesan meringue

Is Strongsville ready for a salad that has real anchovies in it? I hope so, because I adored this salad! I'm not generally a huge anchovy fan, but the combination of flavors and textures on this plate totally worked for me.  Caesar salad is traditionally started by combining raw egg, garlic, salt and anchovy filet and creaming them together - we learned about this at The Leopard, where it was prepared tableside for us (before Jeff's tenure there).  Jeff here skillfully plays with those elements and makes them tasty and approachable. The warm meringue covered the egg component, and had a touch of sweetness that played very nicely off of the subtle fish flavor from the tasted-but-not-seen anchovy. The house-made brioche croutons broke easily and provided nice crunch against the creamy garlic, and just the right amount of absorbency without getting soggy. Did I mention that I adored this salad?

In fact, all of the salads we tasted both nights were fabulous - not a bad note among them. 

mache pit - goat cheese, pistachio, honey, pomegranate, lemon vinaigrette

Order this salad and you'll fully understand why it is served in a clear bowl. It is fun to play with (the name describes how it is put together) and fun to eat! Bob had this Monday, our friend Edsel ordered it on Tuesday - it is a true "mache pit," built from the bottom up.

braised beef short rib, parsnip polenta, garden vegetables, pan sauce

Bob's Tuesday entree was a Jeff Jarrett signature - short rib. Cooked nicely, with a hint of chocolate in the sauce - this plate was so good that Bob even ate his broccoli!

scallops, celery root puree, apple slaw, gremolata, salsa verde

Both of our dining companions ordered this entree and reported their enjoyment. The scallop I tasted was cooked perfectly, and Edsel did let me also steal a swipe of the creamy celery puree. Yum.

The great consistency Bob and I noted in both meals was the veritable perfection in the purees, vegetables and sauces (in almost infinite variation of styles) on the plates. Jeff is truly gifted at creating unique plate elements that work on all levels -  visual, smell, taste, texture and with some, playfulness. Our only complaint was that some plates needed a larger quantity of some of these accouterments, but I expect that this will work itself out as the kitchen becomes more accustomed to plating Jeff's creations. Of course, Jeff also excels at good old fashioned comfort foods - hold the gastrique, candied fruits, vinaigrettes, meringues, confits, and gremolatas, and you get my Tuesday entree:

flat iron steak, mac n’ cheese, braised green beans



The. Best. Mac N Cheese. Ever. Nothing fancy or cutting edge; no pork or seafood. Just a perfect custard-like texture, rich cheesy flavor and crispy topping. 



The green beans were braised with bacon, and tasted so good that I had to share them with my tablemates. I mean, who gets that excited about winter green beans?



The steak was cooked to a perfect medium-rare and had nice crusting accented by cracked black pepper and other seasonings. Oh, and what do you know - there was a small pool of sauce on that plate after all. Shhhh - this was still an amazing plate of completely approachable, familiar, and satisfying food.

Lauren's desserts are a veritable bargain at $5 each:


deconstructed s’more: marshmallow meringue, graham cracker sablé, chocolate ganache

I loved the meringue, and any dish that invites play prior to ingestion works in my book. The warm topping nicely melted the chocolate onto the cookie.


beet parfait: pomegranate molasses, spicy chocolate cookie, chocolate curl

Beet desserts seem to be the fashion in Cleveland this year, and this one does not disappoint. If you like beets at all, you should love this dish. I loved the combination of the beet sorbet with the chocolate curl.


dark chocolate mousse, devils food cake, dried cherries, parmesan tuille

Bob and I shared this dessert the first night and Tom got it the second - and all who tasted it pronounced it "plate licking" good. Though we all agreed that the cheese in the tuille clashed a little with the chocolate - the dessert as a whole tasted so good that a little clash didn't matter. The two types of chocolate paired with cherry combined deliciously.

I need to note that, as is customary, the Friends and Family night meal was comped. The next night, the four of us enjoyed dinner expecting to pay for our meals, but at the end, we were again comped (thank you Jeff!).

As with any restaurant open for less than a week, Palate still has a few kinks to work out. But I am confident that Chef Jeff, General Manager Christopher Von Alt, and their staff will do their utmost to provide a completely enjoyable dining experience should you venture to Strongsville and visit with them. And with price points between $4-8 for small plates and $13-20 for entrees, I am already looking forward to a return!

A few months before opening Palate, Jeff joined with Cleveland chefs Brian Okin and Ellis Cooley (AMP 150) to start Dinner in the Dark. Each month, a group of chefs prepare a multi-course wine dinner for an audience willing to dine without advance notice of who is cooking or what is being cooked. All proceeds from each dinner are donated to a different charity. The next event is January 17, at Palate, and will benefit the Cleveland Sight Center. Please call Palate at (440) 238-8500 to make your 6:30pm reservation ($65). We'll be there, and we hope that you will be too!

Fun Playing with Lasagna with Help From Ohio City Pasta and Michael Symon

Lasagna is one of those foods, like meatloaf, that everyone's mom makes and it's all good. And I don't know about your mom - but my mom's lasagna rocks. I still can't exactly duplicate my mom's delicious lasagna, but to me, it was always the best lasagna.

Bob and I planned to shop at the West Side Market last Saturday and pick up the December installment of my Ohio City Pasta prize - and I'd been fantasizing about making a lasagna with fresh OCP pasta sheets and frozen garden tomatoes. I don't usually follow a recipe when making lasagna, though I do like to consult a couple of "reference" recipes when constructing the sauce. For years, my "go to" for this purpose has been from Dom De Luise's "Eat This, You'll Feel Better," which I've annotated with tips from other chefs I respect. But I knew that Michael Symon's book Live to Cook had a sauce recipe, which is why I reached for our copy of this book last Friday night. It turned out that the Iron Chef included his mom's lasagna recipe! And that recipe contained some unique elements, like using pork neck bones in building the sauce. I couldn't wait to try it.

The recipe's ingredient list practically begged for a trip to the West Side Market. I knew we could get every ingredient that we didn't already have, including pork neck bones and fresh mozzarella. We'd also defrosted a pound of Miller Livestock Co. ground beef (which we could have bought at Foster's Meats at the WSM if we didn't already have) and a pound of spicy Italian sausage from our Breychak Farm hog (we could have gotten lovely sausage at the Market if we'd needed it). The only deliberate variation from Michael's recipe would be the use of fresh pasta from OCP rather than dried. I was excited to photograph and blog this meal because it would be loaded with fantastic, locally sourced ingredients and promised to taste so good. I anticipated those photos capping off a post showing off the Ohio City Pasta prizes from October, November and December (don't worry - I'll be showing you October and November shortly in another post).

After a Saturday morning of running around and shopping, about 3pm, I propped open the book and began to follow the recipe. If I use an actual recipe when cooking (which isn't often), I like to follow it pretty exactly  the first time I use it - how else will I learn anything new? However, over the next two hours, it became apparent that somehow, the recipe contained a few wrong turns.

When Alton Brown signed our copy of "I'm Just Here For More Food," he made a point of correcting a typo that found it's way into a recipe for pizza dough (page 238) that he told us could kill him - the "chewable children's vitamin C" in the recipe proof sent to the printer somehow came out of publication as "aspirin." Alton told us that he is deathly allergic to aspirin, and this fact made the publishing error just a bit ominous, even though it was sheer happenstance. My friends Linda and Fred Griffith have written no fewer than six cookbooks (one of which won a James Beard Award), and they also tell me that these kinds of things happen more than you'd think between final proofs and publication. So - I regret that a long day and late dinner made me rant to my Facebook friends about  some glitches in the published lasagna recipe. Of course, it isn't every day that people who are involved in the creation of a published cookbook are also reading your FB posts - but I now know on very reliable authority that the recipe for "Mom's Lasagna" on page 234 of Live to Cook has a couple of publishing errors. And while those errors led to some extra fussing and achy feet last weekend - they did not detract from the ultimate deliciousness of the dish. Which by coincidence, Michael's mom actually made for him the very next day!

I was blissfully unaware of any of these issues as I prepped the items needed for the sauce pan.

 

Chopped Farmers' Market Onion, Garden Garlic, Bay Leaves

Pork Neck Bones - Foster's Meats (WSM)


Hot Italian Sausage - Breychak Farms Berkshire Hog


Ground Beef -  Miller Livestock Co.


Ground Veal - Sebastian's Meats (WSM)

Unfortunately, the very first steps of the recipe became my undoing. The recipe said to sweat the onion and garlic in olive oil with salt, then add the pork bones and brown them, then add the rest of the meat and brown on medium heat. Oops. Moments after the bones hit the pan, I knew I was in trouble. The high heat needed to brown the bones would scorch the vegetables. So I scooped the bones out. Then I scooped the veggies out. Then I returned the bones to the pan on high heat to brown. But since I hadn't re-rinsed the bones, bits of garlic and onion were stuck to them, and yes, they burned. Ruined the fond. Luckily, the smallest piece of neckbone Foster's had was 1.5 pounds - a bit more than the 1 pound called for in the recipe. So even though I lost the fond, my sauce still had a fabulous depth of porky flavor. Note to self - always brown the bones first, then meats, then and only then veggies and only after removing said meats from the pan. No matter what the recipe says. The sauce also seemed to need more tomato balance, so I added a small can of tomato paste a bit at a time as the sauce simmered.

And [insert best Droopy voice] do you know what? Though it wasn't fun while it was happening (it was a pain in the buns to switch to a clean pan and to get everything in the right order, and we did try to save the scorched fond), and though the process took about two hours total because of the snafu - the final result was a mighty fine, mighty porky, yet still beefy sauce:

While the sauce simmered for two more hours, I assembled the ricotta cheese mixture. Thankfully, the recipe did not call for the traditional bechemel sauce, which would have required still more cooking prior to final assembly.

Fresh Ricotta - MEDITERRANEAN IMPORTED FOODS STAND: NW Corner of the Market

Fresh Mozzarella - MEDITERRANEAN IMPORTED FOODS STAND: NW Corner of the Market

Fresh Ohio City Pasta Sheets

The Ohio City Pasta was simply fabulous. I neither precooked it, nor did I slice it into strips, as some online recipes suggested. Due to the large size of the pan (Bob talked me out of using a smaller glass lasagna pan in favor of a roasting pan), it took two sheets of pasta to make each layer (which is why I didn't cut it up further). Also, I should note that OCP makes several flavors of pasta sheet, though we stuck with the traditional for this application.

Here, a layer of sauce is covered by the raw OCP, then a layer of sauce.

The ricotta was mixed with fresh parsley and oregano, and frozen garden basil, as well as farmers' market eggs and some of the fresh mozzarella that didn't like my attempt to grate it in the Cuisinart. A layer was spread over the sauce in the pan. Then more fresh pasta, sauce and cheese mixture. Since the fresh mozzarella didn't like the automated grating process (though to be fair, grating a similarly fresh cheese by hand on the box grater did work), I sliced the rest for the topping. That's how my mom topped her lasagna, anyway. A generous dose of grated Parmesan went on top as well, per the recipe. Covered and baked for an hour, then uncovered and baked for half an hour - we got this:

Another oops - I probably should have cut the pasta sheets into strips - we got a bit of an air bubble, which disappeared upon insertion of a sharp knife point.

And so, around 10pm - dinner was served, and yes, it was a dinner worth waiting for. We added additional mozzarella to the top of the leftovers for the re-heats (remember, I lost a bunch of my original mozzarella topping to the Cuisinart, though it's in there!), but don't worry, the top layer of cheese only looks sparse - the taste and texture were simply marvelous.

The OCP pasta sheets added an even fresher and toothier dimension to the fabulous ingredients listed in the recipe. The only other note is that the final product needed more salt - I suspect that the raw pasta cooking in the lasagna pan may have sucked out some of the salt from the other ingredients.  But with a little sprinke of salt, the taste was sublime. No, this wasn't my mom's lasagna - but it was definitely a mom's lasagna and most worthy of the moniker.

I promise to show you October and November's Ohio City Pasta goodness in another post - but this lasagna seemed to deserve a post of it's own. And we will be enjoying it right through Christmas Eve!

So, what did this kneehopper learn? First - never ever put your brain in park when cooking - even if the recipe originated with people you adore and respect - there are so many ways it can go wrong. Listen to your inner cook if a step in a printed recipe seems a little off. Use amazing ingredients if you can; they can cover many cooking sins. And don't hesitate to laugh at yourself if things seem like they are getting out of hand. Chances are, it will still taste good! Follow these guidelines to play with your food and you will be rewarded with yummies.

Merry Christmas to those who celebrate on Friday and Saturday (I'm going to my first ever Christmas dinner this year), and best of the Holiday Season to all!