That's Not an Orange!

Over the weekend and in somewhat of a mad rush, I grabbed a sack of oranges from Costco with which to make an orange salad for my guests on Sunday.

As I am wont to do, I put anyone in range of the kitchen to work on dinner and one of the guests was set to peeling and slicing the oranges. As soon as she had cut into the first one, she told me, "This is not an orange."

I looked at it and sure enough, it was not. It had a very thick skin and the flesh was very juicy with segments that separated fairly easily in the manner of a clementine or tangerine. And in my haste to get home with the oranges, I totally overlooked the telltale nipple on the bottom of the fruit.

And on closer inspection, the bag that I grabbed read Mineola, which is a variety of tangelo, a cross between a grapefruit and a tangerine. I've eaten tangelos before, but only out of hand, generally peeled and eaten by segments like a tangerine.

This is the first time that I have made them into a salad and a fine salad it was. I share the recipe idea with you here:

Orange Salad

oranges, peeled and sliced
salt and pepper
pine nuts, toasted
mint, finely sliced en chiffonade
feta cheese, crumbled
honey
extra virgin olive oil

Arrange the oranges on a platter and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Scatter pine nuts, mint, and feta cheese over to your liking. Drizzle with honey and extra virgin olive oil.

For a more savory salad, I often scatter pitted olives over. Often I substitute either pistachios or almonds for the pine nuts. For a sweeter dessert course salad, I sometimes omit the feta cheese. And sometimes I scatter pomegranate seeds over. As you can see, this is a very free form salad that you can mold to your tastes and the ingredients on hand.

Hurts So Good!

From time to time, I donate private cooking lessons and dinner to various organizations to auction for a fundraiser. This weekend, I did dinner for eight and the high bidders wanted me to demonstrate dishes with lamb ("but not chops"). For some reason, I was in the mood for North African food or other Arab-inflected food, so I cooked up a tagine, a couscous, a couple of other dishes, and a big batch of harissa.

Harissa is a common red chile-based table sauce or condiment in North Africa (and naturally in the south of France because of the immigrants from North Africa). Although it is available commercially, I can make a quart of it in less than two minutes from ingredients that I already have on hand in my pantry and it tastes better than any canned product I’ve ever tasted. I truly love harissa and am always looking for a chance to introduce newcomers to it.

I don't think any of my guests were familiar with harissa, based on the questions they were asking. One of them said, "this tastes like hot sauce with flavor!" I noticed at first everyone was being very careful about the harissa—it is very spicy—but that most everyone kept tasting and tasting it. Yes, it hurts so good!

This is my personal spice mix scaled to non-restaurant proportions—adjust it to your taste. Also, I never measure anything; I just eyeball the ingredients and then adjust the seasoning depending on my mood.

2 teaspoons cumin seeds
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
1 teaspoon caraway seeds
1 cup sambal oelek* (or other crushed chile paste)
1 tablespoon garlic, minced
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon pimentón (smoked paprika)
Juice of one lemon
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

Toast the seeds in a pan over medium flame, tossing or stirring, until warm and fragrant. Grind half the seeds immediately in a spice mill. Mix the whole seeds, the ground seeds, and all the other ingredients, then taste for seasoning. Excellent with couscous, lamb, chickpeas, eggplant, and so forth. Tastes better after a day or so in the refrigerator.

*Sambal oelek is not traditional. In Africa, rehydrated dried red chiles (or sometimes fresh red chiles) are ground in a mortar. I just skip that step and use Huy Fong's sambal oelek, which we buy by the gallon. Nor is pimentón authentic. But many times harissa is made from chiles dried over a smoky fire, as are the peppers that are ground to become pimentón.

Cake Cutting Fee

Last evening a group booked a table to celebrate a birthday (thank you!). Earlier in the day, they called to ask if they could bring a cake. Our standard response is to offer to make a special cake, if we know far enough in advance.

This party called about the cake at around 4:30 pm for a 6:00 pm reservation. (Again, thanks to them for calling in advance and not just bringing the cake in without warning.) Because we did not have time to make a cake or other special dessert, our standard response is that we charge a cake cutting fee.

Most customers are not happy about this cake cutting fee and choose to eat dinner with us and eat their cake back at home after dinner, which is what this party did. Wise choice and thanks again to them.

Of course, there are customers who call many days in advance to discuss bringing in a very special cake (one that we could not do, mostly for sentimental reasons) for their event. We generally waive the fee, gladly I might add—usually we never even broach the topic. But the bulk of customers who want to bring a cake are trying to save money at our expense.

The bottom line for us is that we are in business to make money. If you bring a cake into the restaurant, you not only deprive us of dessert sales, but you also occupy a table that we could potentially reseat to generate more revenue. On top of that, you're using our china and silverware without paying your share of the cost of purchase, the cost of breakage, and the labor to wash and polish it.

Moreover, there is the aspect of insult. We, especially those of us who make the pastries, find it insulting that someone would bring in a pastry from out of house. Usually, it's a $10 Wal-Mart sheet cake made without any artistry or care; it's just a commodity. We take extreme pride in our food and it's painful when customers don't appreciate what we do.

I'm sure most customers never consider these issues, which is why I am bringing them up here.

Being in the hospitality business puts us in the unique situation of having to deal with people bringing food in from the outside to consume in our restaurant. You would never bring your own auto parts to the car dealer for repairs, would you? Would you bring your own bottle of bourbon to a bar and expect to be served? So, why would you bring a cake to a restaurant and expect to be served?

Bottom line for us: please don't bring a cake to our restaurant unless we've discussed it beforehand. We would find it rude and insulting.

What are Maryland Crab Cakes?

I get asked from time to time in the dining room if our crab cakes are Maryland-style. I don't know. I'm a Virginia boy who spent the summers of his youth on our end of the Chesapeake Bay crabbing and eating crabs. What do I know about Maryland?

Truth be told, I also lived in Maryland for several years and my wife was a resident in Baltimore, so you would think that I would know a Maryland crab cake when I ate one. Not so. Around here, we don't find it necessary to label our crab cakes.

But I do have to say that I had the worst crab cakes of my life at the Inner Harbor in Baltimore: so loaded with red Bell peppers and Old Bay that I couldn't taste the crab. I know that this is not what Maryland crab cakes are all about.

My crab cakes are very simple: crab, celery, parsley, white pepper, salt, egg, panko, and mayonnaise. End of story. And they are fantastic and probably representative of what the rest of the US calls Maryland crab cakes.

So, dear readers, what are Maryland crab cakes? And, what other kinds of crab cakes are there?

Third Annual Harvest Dinner

On Thursday, August the 28th, we put on our third annual Harvest Dinner honoring the hard work and outstanding products of Beth and Gene Nowak at Mayfair Farm. Beth and Gene supply us the bulk of our produce here at the restaurant and this is our way of saying thanks to them.

I decided about three weeks ago to do a yellow gazpacho this year—I try never to repeat a dish from year to year—so I let that Spanish dish set the course for the remaining menu.

The first year that we did this menu, I told nobody that it was to be an entirely vegetarian meal and I surprised (very pleasantly) a bunch of carnivores. Since then, we've advertised the dinner as vegetarian.


Gazpacho Amarillo
Yellow Gazpacho with Poblano Crema and Micro-Celery
Castillo Perelada Cava NV

Relleno de Flor de Calabacita
Beer Battered Squash Bloom Stuffed with Queso Blanco; Salsa Verde
Palacio de Feffiñanes Albariño Rias Baixas 2006

Taloa de Maiz Fresco con Tomate
Fresh Corn and Blue Cornmeal Cake; Fresh Tomato; Herbed Goat Cheese Mousse
Tres Ojos Rosado Calatayud 2007

Patatas y Judias Verdes
Roasted Potatoes and Green Beans with Onions, Olives & Rosemary
Finca la Emperatriz Rioja Crianza 2003

Tortilla de Pimientos
Baked Omelette of Corno di Toro Peppers, Red Onions,
and Everona Dairy Sheep’s Cheese; Romesco Sauce
Tres Ojos Garnacha Calatayud 2006

Frutas con Hueso al Horno; Natillas
Baked Stone Fruits; Cinnamon Crème Anglaise; Semolina Cookie


I always visit the tables after these dinners trying to get a sense for what the customers liked, disliked, and how the wine pairings worked. My sense was that this year, the dish called Patatas y Judias Verdes (potatoes and green beans) was the crowd favorite, which really surprised me because this was probably the most unusual dish on the menu.

One of the customers asked me where this dish came from and I had to tell him that I am not entirely sure. Often dishes just come into my mind and I go cook them, as I did this one. I do know that once I saw the baby red, white, and yellow potatoes at the market, patatas bravas popped into my mind, most probably because I had just had them at Mas, a tapas bar in Charlottesville. Patatas bravas are a classic tapa of browned potatoes, sprinkled with salt, and served with or mixed with a spicy sauce.

At the market, I also saw some really pretty small green beans, so I brought them home. I'm not sure how or why I decided to marry the beans and the potatoes, but many, many Western cultures have bean and potato dishes. Boiled new potatoes and green beans, for example, seems to be a tradition in the Southern US, although it was not in my family.

I have also been on a roasted green bean kick this year ever since I left some beans in the oven far too long and they shrivelled up worse than Szechuan string beans. The flavor of these beans was remarkable.

So there you have it. I roasted whole green beans in olive oil, salt and pepper until they shriveled, about 90 minutes for 10 pounds of beans. And I quartered and roasted all those baby potatoes separately with olive oil, salt and pepper until well browned on all the cut surfaces. Then at service we mixed the beans and potatoes with lots of mixed pitted olives, garlic, fresh rosemary from the plant outside the restaurant's front door, and crushed red pepper flakes. This all went into a hot oven for twenty minutes or so to reheat. Et voilà!

So You Want to be a Chef?

I got really angry at a customer today. It doesn't happen very often because I'm pretty good at shrugging off things. Excuse me for a second while I vent; I couldn't vent at the customer.

On our lunch menu, we have a pasta called Ed's Pasta, named for me because it is my favorite pasta. It's a simple pasta really, just tomatoes, artichoke hearts, capers, browned garlic, hot pepper flakes, basil and white wine. Each ingredient in the dish is there for a particular purpose and the quality of the dish depends on the quality of the ingredients.

A female diner ordered Ed's Pasta for lunch today without tomatoes, which to me is unthinkable. The tomato is the sine qua non of the dish, the essential element, contributing flavor, color, and acidity. My initial reaction on getting the ticket was, "This is going to be boring!" But since I'm in the hospitality business, I didn't go try to talk her out of it; I just cooked it like she requested.

But she crossed the etiquette line when she told her server that the result was "bland." No kidding! Just what you asked for. That's why I'm the chef and you're not.

If you ask for changes to a dish on someone's menu, you have no right to complain when you don't like the result.

There, I feel better already.

Read Much?

Today as I was sitting in my office laboring away on Labor Day, as every other Monday, I heard the front door chime go off at 11:15.

I assumed it was my children for whom I was cooking lunch on their last day of freedom before the dreaded school year starts tomorrow. Aside—I know you're dying to know—We had a frittata of local eggs, chorizo, local tomatoes, local red peppers, pimentón, garlic, thyme from the plant in front of the restaurant, and local sheep's milk cheese similar to but better than Manchego.

Aside aside, back to the front door chime. Because I thought it was the girls and because I was in the midst of some bookkeeping, I was in no hurry to get to the front. Bookkeeping at a good stopping point, I stepped from my lighted office into the very black hallway—no sense in wasting electricity on lighting the restaurant on a day we're not open—and the light contrast left me unable to see for a moment.

Once my eyes became accustomed to the dark and I got to the front, I could see two elderly ladies poking about the nearly pitch dark dining room trying to find someone to seat them. When I cheerfully informed them that we were closed on Mondays, one blurted out a bit rudely, "Well, the door was unlocked."

I clamped a muzzle quickly on my very sarcastic mouth—the possibilities for very snide retorts to her statement are nearly endless—and reminded her that despite being closed to the general public, people do need to come and go: the postman, delivery drivers, tourists walking by who want to book tables, the pest control guy, the ladies that take care of our flowers, our electrician, etc.

Just to reassure myself that the front door is very clearly posted with our hours of business, I took my camera outside. Yep, the sign is still there, still legible, but largely unread by John Q. Public.

A lot of would be customers get semi-hostile when they arrive in the dining room on a Monday only to discover that we're closed. I know that they're only venting at their own failure to check our hours before leaving for the restaurant, but still I'm no different than anyone else: I don't enjoy invective aimed at me any more than you do, even if it really isn't intended for me.

I try my best to be tolerant by putting myself in their shoes, but I keep coming back to the fact that not only can I read, but I do read. I always scan the door of any restaurant that I am about to enter to see if they are in fact open and if they honor my credit cards, as I don't carry cash.

While I am dishing on customers—yes, you readers love it; the more dirt on customers in the blog post, the more frequently the post is read!—here are two more amusing incidents of a similar nature. Before I got in the restaurant business, if I had read about these two incidents, I would have thought that the author were fibbing. But as the saw goes, the truth is much stranger than fiction.

Each year in our town, we host the Shenandoah Apple Blossom Festival, held the week leading into the first weekend in May, to celebrate the beginning of our local apple growing season. Naturally, the apples have already bloomed before the first of May, but never mind. And with fierce competition from both real estate development and Chinese apples, the apple industry is not thriving. Nonetheless, the first weekend in May sees 250,000 to 500,000 people descend on our town of 25,000 to watch our famous parades and celebrate with us.

Because of our location on a back alley, because visitors to the festival are conditioned to want corn dogs, fried confections, blooming onions, and sundry other junk from the myriad street vendors, and because the bulk of our customers are either out of town or are holding or attending one of vast numbers of private parties, we get no traffic that week. 10,000 people walk past our store and not one will come in, unless to use the restrooms.

So, we close out of self-defense to cut our losses and use that week to recuperate and get work done on the restaurant. One year we had the dining room torn apart to paint, with booths jammed into the entry foyer so tight that it was nearly impossible to squeeze by. In the midst of painting one afternoon, I went down the hall to the restroom and when I returned to the dining room, there was a foursome of elderly ladies seated at a table draped in a dropcloth, demanding to be served. How they managed to miss the closed sign on the front door, negotiate the obstacle course to a table, and sit at a draped table without concluding that we were closed is absolutely beyond my comprehension!

Another year, I was on the deck painting the fence when two ladies walked up to the front door, which was posted with a sign stating that we were closed for the week. One lady said, “Oh look, they’re closed!” And the other replied, “Let’s go in and see if they really mean it.” And they proceeded to go inside. Idiots.