Mouthing Off

Editor's note: Tom Colicchio, the head judge on Bravo's Top Chef (and a Food & Wine Best New Chef 1991), will be blogging every day this week about his road trip from Atlanta.

The first destination on our trip was a no-brainer: Anson Mills, a three-hour drive from Atlanta in Columbia, South Carolina. Damon and I have been buying their products for years and we were both eager to meet the company's founder, Glenn Roberts, and to see his operation at work.

Heading towards Columbia we got hungry, and called Glenn for lunch suggestions. He recommended a local favorite called Big T Bar-B-Que. In my experience you usually find the real barbeque gems where you least expect them, and Big T was no exception, operating out of a modest storefront in the middle of a strip mall. The brisket and pulled pork sandwich we ordered were prime examples of the mustard-based barbecue that is typical in South Carolina (and Big T also serves a mean fried chicken).

Editor's note: Tom Colicchio, the head judge on Bravo's Top Chef (and a Food & Wine Best New Chef 1991), will be blogging every day this week about his road trip from Atlanta.

A few weeks ago, I did something that I've had on my mind for a long time: I took a road trip.

"Road trip" has multiple meanings. It can describe a way to travel from Point A to Point B, or it can mean getting away from it all Kerouac-style on the open road. But this trip wasn't about escaping things, it was about finding them. It was about paying visits to some of the food producers who make my restaurants what they are, and discovering new ones the old-fashioned way. On this trip, the stops were the destination.

My starting point was Atlanta. Craft Atlanta had been tapped to produce the dinner for Porsche's "Ultimate Reveal," an event celebrating the launch of their new 4-door Panamera (Atlanta is not only home to the newest Craft restaurant, but also to Porsche's North American Headquarters), and I flew down to handle the event personally.

When Porsche offered to lend me a spanking new Panamera 4S for an extended "test drive," and it was an opportunity I couldn't refuse (when someone hands you the keys to a Porsche, you do not ask questions). I cleared my schedule for a week, kidnapped our executive chef Damon and my assistant Liz, and set out in the general direction of New York.

Over the coming days I'll be using this blog to relay the highlights of the six-day, 1,200 mile journey that took me from Atlanta to Columbia, on to Charleston, then Chapel Hill, the Chesapeake, Washington DC, rural Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, and finally back to New York. I hope you enjoy the ride.

Veal can be such a controversial meat that even people who are otherwise omnivorous won’t eat it. But I've noticed that humanely raised veal has become easier to find than beef or even pork. It looks like writer Jane Black has seen the same thing: She did an extensive article about veal in today's Washington Post. She writes about the “free-raised” line of veal from Strauss, which we tried here several months back; we include its luxe Meadow Reserve version sold at Allen Brothers in our upcoming December issue. Thanks to raising calves on pasture where their diet is a blend of grass and their mothers' milk, this veal is rosy and deeply flavorful—a far cry from the anemic-looking meat (a result of raising calves in crates) that could make even a foie gras eater rally. Strauss is working to distribute the meat nationwide, and it's already available at many Whole Foods stores. This weekend, I was thrilled to find Strauss veal in my local Gristedes. I bought a shoulder chop and braised it in a lemon zest and bay leaf–infused chicken stock, then finished the sauce with a little cream. It was delicious, but the meat was more mild in flavor than I remembered. Then I realized that the packaging said “group-raised,” meaning these calves are not raised outside but are still able to walk around and be with other animals. It’s not ideal, but I’m happy that Strauss, a huge player in the veal industry, is moving in the right direction. Here, F&W's best veal recipes.

The NYC Marathon is one month away, and while I’ve been pretty diligent about getting in my long training runs, I’ve been more lackadaisical about my diet. I’ve learned the hard way that late-night Momofuku pork buns and foie gras ice cream are not the best fuel for a 5 a.m. workout. So I’m making an attempt to cook at home more over the next few weeks, and I’ve found myself turning to the new cookbook from Ron and Colleen Suhanosky, the husband-and-wife chef team behind Sfoglia in Nantucket and New York City. Pasta Sfoglia features more than 100 recipes inspired by Sfoglia’s addictive pasta dishes. While I don’t always have time to make pasta from scratch during the week, I do have the luxury of being able to buy exceptional ingredients, like Sfoglia’s bread and house-made goat cheese, at Tutto Sfoglia, the tiny new market adjacent to the Upper East Side restaurant.

My family started composting in our backyard last year, and this summer, my husband scattered some of the resulting soil in the bed where we plant thyme, basil, parsley and sage. A few weeks later, out sprouted two big, leafy plants we didn't recognize. "It looks like some kind of squash," said my husband, who grew up with a quarter-acre vegetable plot in his backyard. So we let the mystery plants grow. It turns out, the seeds from a spaghetti squash we'd eaten last summer must have survived the composting process. We got tons of rain this summer, so we never even watered the plants. A few weeks ago, we had our first harvest. I cooked a squash using steps 1 & 3 from this recipe by F&W's Marcia Kiesel and tossed the strands with some whole-wheat spaghetti and pesto. The process of composting is basically benign neglect—you throw vegetable peelings, eggshells and leaves in a pile and let it sit. I never expected I would also get a vegetable garden without having to lift a finger.

 Right now I am eating my way through the bushy hedge of flat-leaf parsley bordering my garden. Using the parsley like spinach, I recently blanched a pile of leaves, sautéed them with garlic and lemon, put them in a baking dish and dotted them with goat cheese. Then I topped them with bread crumbs and olive oil and baked them in a hot oven. Super!

To get ready for winter, I plan to make a puree with the blanched leaves, then mix it with olive oil for freezing in small batches. That way I'll have it on hand to drizzle over soft- or hard-cooked eggs, cheese grits and smoked-salmon sandwiches.

Here, a few more ideas for this underrated green:

Make a salad of parsley leaves and celery dressed with lemon juice and olive oil, then tuck it into a pita pocket along with olives, feta and tomatoes.
Chop a mess of parsley and stir it into mayo for a sandwich spread. Tasty and vitamin packed, it's mightier than lettuce.
Make parsley pesto in the blender to toss with angel hair pasta and scallops or to dress green beans and/or cooked, sliced potatoes.
Make salsa verde for poached chicken and grilled fish.

My morning ritual has always revolved around an oversize mug of really good coffee (usually Peets or LaMill), which I brew at my apartment and drink while reading the paper before work. But now that I'm training for November’s New York City marathon, my morning runs end at my gym near the Food & Wine offices in midtown. As a result, I’ve found myself purchasing questionable-quality Joe so that I can get my morning caffeine fix.

So I was thrilled last month when I saw that a new coffee shop called Gregorys had opened around the corner from our office on 44th Street and even more excited after I tasted their coffee and incredible espresso. After some sleuthing, I discovered that Gregorys gets its freshly roasted beans from Kobricks, a roaster in Jersey City, N.J. Kobricks imports green coffee beans from Central and South America as well as the East Indies and Africa. The family-run roaster also happens to be the exclusive importer of Antica Tostura Triestina, an espresso roasted in Northern Italy using a 100-year-old wood-oven method.
 
This is actually Gregorys second store. The original, on Park Avenue and 24th Street, is where all the baked goods (like the excellent granola), sandwiches and salads get made. The staff is currently being trained in latte art, so lattes will come delivered with a heart shape swirled into the foam.

Every year I miss out on olallieberry season. This is partially because the season is short, but also because olallieberries grow almost exclusively in coastal California. Their lineage is confusing, but the best way to describe them is a tart cross between a blackberry and a raspberry. I don't fret too much about missing them at the market, though, because the berries taste best when sweetened up a bit in things like jams. I’ll be placing my “order” with friends on the West Coast soon, but you can also buy this season’s jams here and here.  

Saddened by yesterday's news that historic Guss’ Pickles is moving out of Manhattan’s Lower East Side after 89 years (and some sour legal issues), I’ve resolved to make my own batch. Here are a few I’ll try from the F&W archives:

Chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s Saffron Cucumber Pickles (amazing with grilled food, pictured here).

F&W Best New Chef 2009 Linton Hopkins’s Bread-and-Butter Pickles (crunchy, sweet and tangy).

F&W’s own Grace Parisi’s Winey Briny Quick Pickles (total prep time is only 20 minutes, plus overnight brining).

OR these 13 fantastic pickled vegetable recipes.

I hadn't cooked for my kids for more than two weeks, but all that changed when they returned from camp yesterday. Maybe I was out of practice, maybe I was feeling a bit defiant or maybe I was just hoping for a change, but given how much I enjoyed superspicy broccoli rabe last week, I wanted it again. There were sweet Italian sausages in the fridge, some homemade focaccia buns in the freezer and, of course, broccoli rabe—all ready to come together. I thought about sautéing the broccoli rabe, chopping it and kneading it into the sausage meat, but that would've been too cruel to my kids, not to mention self-defeating (I would surely have wound up making PB&Js). To satisfy everyone, I sautéed the broccoli rabe with garlic and so much crushed red pepper flakes all our mouths were vibrating, grilled the sausage patties (and the buns) and sandwiched it all together. A little aioli with olives, capers and herbs from my garden finished the dish. Malcolm, my 7-year-old son, passed on the aioli and broccoli rabe, but my 12-year-old daughter, Pia, ate it all.