Another Tasting

And the fall dishes keep coming. This tasting is all about two things: comfort and flavor. No boundary pushing, no fancy food, just pure flavors, simple presentations, and awesomeness of ingredients.

Chowder/Lentil Shoots/Scallop/Black Truffle Beurre Blanc

Duck Confit Pupusa/Orange Salad

Crispy Cavolo Nero/Grits/Quail Stuffed with Cannellini, Smoked Sausage, and Sage/Cacciatore Sauce

Corn-Thyme Crème Caramel/Pickled Figs/Duck Breast/Tiny Green Beans/Tasmanian Pepper Syrup

Orange Polenta Upside Down Cake/Coconut Sorbet/Crème Anglaise

Alien Ingredient #38: Lentil Shoots

Lentil Shoots: A Beautiful Garnish

One of my growers brought me a flat of microgreens that I had never seen before and asked me, "What is it?" I tasted a couple shoots and they start a touch bitter then finish distinctly green chickpea. Some tasters said they tasted like green peas, but these sprouts taste more chickpea to me. And they look like a legume as well. She told us that these are lentil shoots.

Vote: with a beautiful texture and a pleasant pea flavor, what's not to love?

Early Autumn Tasting

I know that it's not fall yet and won't be officially for another couple of weeks, but mentally, Tony and I are off creating fall menus already. As much as we love tomatoes, squash, squash blooms, and peppers, we are ready for the change to game, mushrooms, braised dishes, conserved pork products, and bacon, bacon, bacon.

Grilled Prosciutto-Wrapped Goat Cheese-Stuffed Figs

Grilled Prosciutto-Wrapped Goat Cheese-Stuffed Figs. This is not an earth shattering new dish, but it is wonderful nonetheless for having been made with local figs and local goat cheese. Next up, we're already scheming to make our own prosciutto when it gets cold enough. Served with a glass of prosecco, these are a great start to any meal.

Sausage and Eggs

Breakfast. Yet another in the long list of dishes that we have so titled, this one starts with a bed of chanterelle buttons cooked up with our bison and our venison sausages. On top is a spoonful of oeufs brouillés, duck eggs with chives and a splash of cream that have been whisked over a water bath until just set, more like a heavy sauce than traditional scrambled eggs and so, so much more sinful. Maple syrup around the edge adds a sweet note.

Truffled Steuben Yellow Eye Bean Soup; Potted Confit

Beans. Definitely my favorite dish of this whole tasting, and for being a soup, the most complex to make. My guests for this tasting are frequent diners and lovers of cassoulet, and so I worded the menu in such a way as to make them think that this course was going to be cassoulet. The beans are my favorites, Steuben Yellow Eyes, soaked overnight, drained, cooked to tender, and recooked with the juice that comes from roasting our pork belly (what we call "goodness"), mirepoix, smoked Surry sausage, garlic, thyme, bay, rosemary, and sage. It's all blitzed in the big Vita-Mix and passed through our finest chinois for an ultra-silky texture. Thinned, splashed with a touch of cream, seasoned, and lavished with a big spoonful of chopped black truffles, this is a soup for the culinary gods. Served with a croustade topped with potted confit. We finely chopped some of our duck confit and pork shoulder confit, then mixed it with softened butter, nutmeg, mace, and fresh thyme.

Braaied Skilpadjies

Skilpadjies. You South Africans might recognize the minature skilpadjies that we braaied on a skewer and served with geelrys. The rest of you see small tortoise-shaped patties of minced lamb and rabbit liver wrapped in caul fat, which have been grilled and served with a fragrant yellow rice and a green tomato ketchup. Somebody brought us a bunch of green cherry tomatoes from a field that needed to be tilled under for fall crops and so we made a big batch of spicy green tomato ketchup from them.

Corn Crème Caramel with Duck Breast

Duck. Here's another savory crème caramel. I just love the silky texture that it brings to a dish. This one is made from fresh corn flavored with thyme. You also see grilled Moulard duck breast, baby brussels sprouts, and a fresh fig. I made a jus (almost a consommé but I didn't technically clarify it) from more pork belly goodness, defatted Surry sausage jus, and star anise. This jus I spooned over so that its salty essence could marry with the caramel giving a delicious sweet-salty contrast with a haunting star anise note to bring out the spice in the accompanying Barossa Shiraz.

Pawpaw Panna Cotta

Pawpaw. We've been fortunate this year to have a local forager supply us wild pawpaws which have a banana-melon-mango flavor very similar to jackfruit. But pawpaws are a gigantic pain in the ass to prepare, unlike jackfruit. Here you see a plate with pawpaw purée, crème anglaise, and maple syrup on the plate, with miniature pawpaw panna cottas scattered about. Though it's hard tell, the large ball is a ball of coconut sorbet rolled in crushed black walnuts, with an oatmeal lace cookie sticking out of it.

Alien Ingredient #15: Fresh Green Chickpeas

I reckon my body is probably 50% chickpeas, so many do I eat. Chickpeas are no doubt my primary protein source and one of my favorite foods. I've never seen a chickpea plant or pod before, though I have seen pictures. That is, never until just recently when I saw a bunch of green ones in the pods at the market.

I assumed that like the other green shell-on legumes with which I am familiar, green peanuts and green soybeans (edamame), green chickpeas would be very good to eat out of hand after just shelling them. And I was right. They are delicious with a nutty vegetal flavor that reminds me of raw Kuta squash. They remind me slightly of raw green peas and the nuttiness also conjures slightly underripe avocado. I also tried boiling them like peanuts or edamame in salted water and they were equally delicious. Finally, I tossed half the remainder into fried rice and half into an ersatz risotto. Delicious!

Vote: yum, yum, yum!

Another Tasting

I found some photos today while housekeeping. These are from a tasting back in March, the last tasting I was able to photograph before my old Nikon died. For us, this tasting was a chance to play with technique and answer some of those nagging "How do we do this?" kinds of questions. There are a couple of things here worth remembering.



Four Citrus Scallop Seviche. This is a very straightforward scallop napoleon meets seviche dish. In this case, we pickled only the vegetables and then layered them with the seared scallop. The four citrus zests—yuzu, lemon, lime, and orange—combine with the cumin, garlic, cilantro, and ancho paste to yield a complex seviche.



Steelhead Trout. This is a play on an appetizer that we serve at the restaurant from time to time: crispy salmon nuggets in green Thai curry. We have scattered on the plate a green Thai curry sauce, Thai basil leaves, crispy steelhead nuggets, a steelhead skin crisp, gravlax of steelhead, and an excellent salmon roe caviar. I was not happy with this presentation—too sparse—but then we run that risk when we plate novel dishes all the time.



Crab Mango Cocktail. This is the offspring of a mango soup shooter with crab fritter amuse that I wanted to do crossed with the mango cocktail that Travis wanted to do. It ended up as an intermezzo. The mango cocktail comprises mango, coconut milk, lime juice, dark rum, and red Thai curry paste.



Brussels Sprouts with Crispy Duck Confit Threads. This dish was an effort to bring a salad to the menu and was more so an exercise to see what we could do with temperature contrast in the salad dressing. You see blanched brussels sprouts petals and threads of duck confit that we have deep fried to crispy goodness, all tossed in warm duck fat, then surrounded by a granita of watermelon vinegar, locally produced vinegar made from watermelon juice.



Refried Beans. I was looking for a foil for wild mushrooms and I think I found it in refried Sea Island Red Peas. We cooked the red peas with bacon and mirepoix, then puréed them and refried them in duck fat. Garnishes are chives, black trumpet mushrooms, pimentón sauce; and puffed wild rice.



Waldorf Salad. We were looking for a cool, refreshing intermezzo course and came up with this summer roll meets classic Waldorf salad. A thin sheet of cucumber is rolled around a salad of apple and celery julienne, crushed walnuts, and a walnut oil vinaigrette. Garnished with more vinaigrette and candied walnuts.



Lamb and Peppers. This was an exercise in using up lamb. We get frequent deliveries of lambs and are constantly finding ways to use the off cuts: the spareribs, necks, foreshanks, etc. One great way is to braise (red cook) them in Chinese fashion in soy, rice wine, brown sugar, green onions, star anise, cinnamon, garlic, and ginger for hours until the meat is tender. Then we pull the meat and reduce the defatted sauce, mixing them along with sesame seeds and green onions. This is a wonderful accompaniment to a fruity red such as our local Chambourcin or a Paso Robles Syrah.



"Smoked" Duck Noodle Soup. My favorite dish at Thai Winchester is the Roasted Duck Noodle Soup, a pan-Asian pho-like soup. This is my upscale homage to that dish. In the bottom of a soup plate, I put a smear of leek ash paste. Then you see a tradtional pho broth redolent of star anise, cinammon, ginger, and lemongrass in the bottom of the bowl. The broth is highly reduced to concentrate the flavors and then clarified. We rubbed a duck breast with leek ash to simulate its having been smoked, cooked it medium rare and put it over the broth. Then the traditional table salad follows: Thai basil, cilantro, green onions. And finally, we deep fried the rice noodles and placed them over for garnish. We were playing around with leek ash here and it was an OK result, but we would have been better off simply to cold smoke the duck breasts. Live and learn, but still a great dish.



Apple. We decided to play with apples in all their forms and see what ended up on the plate. There is a highly reduced apple cider syrup, apple sauce granita, dried apple, and a ring of apple in the center of which we baked a tiny crème brûlée. Garnishes are a white chocolate-cinnamon-pink salt bark and an appletini—mainly apple cider, Calvados, and bitters, rimmed with cinnamon sugar. I've got to say that baking those crème brûlées was tricky, tricky, tricky.

Chef's Table

Here are more photos from a recent Chef's Table. We had some fun with these dishes. As always, they are a result of collaboration among the cooks and me. In creating these menus, everyone throws in ideas and we see what sticks. Usually some hybrids happen and for the better.



Cucumber Summer Roll. We were kicking around amuse ideas and somehow got onto summer rolls when Tony offered the idea of using cucumber instead of rice paper. I ultimately changed this course from an Asian-inspired one to a more European-flavored one, to bring it in line with the rest of the menu. Inside the roll is cucumber, carrot, parsley stems, and court bouillon-poached shrimp bound with a mayonnaise flavored with lemon zest, dill, and capers. Crunchy with big flavor, yet very refreshing, everything a good amuse should be.



Rockfish. We've been on a fish-in-broth kick for a few tasting menus now (because we love the idea of half soup, half entrée) and so we came quite naturally to rockfish (the local name for striped bass, this from the Chesapeake Bay) with wild mushrooms and a Surry sausage jus. Sometime in the middle of the night before the tasting, I hit me to put the fish on a base of parsnip crème caramel to add some sweetness and richness to the dish. (Don't ask me why I decided this or even how, I don't have a clue. Like most of my food ideas, it just appeared in my brain). The caramel is very dark so it is not very sweet and there is no sugar in the custard. The flavors worked very well and I think the guests were intrigued with the it-looks-like-dessert-but-its-a-fish-dish aspect.



Breakfast. This is just the kind of dish that tickles a lot of chefs and brings out the kid in us. Who doesn't love breakfast for dinner? We've had a version of this dish on the dinner menu for about a week and apparently our customers don't love breakfast for dinner! It seems de rigueur in these parts to order a salad before dinner rather than something that we have put our creative energy into. Sigh. You see down on the plate a pimentón sauce and Virginia maple syrup (yes, we make damn fine maple syrup in Virginia too) and on top of that a napoleon of parsnip latkes and grilled rounds of Alan Benton's country sausage, all topped with a poached quail egg and a dribble of hollandaise: Eggs Benedict gone miniature.



Nest Egg. This dish is the merger of two other ideas, one a Carolina Gold and Sea Island red pea hoppin' john risotto and the other a polenta ball stuffed with oxtail ragù. We ended up stuffing the oxtail into the risotto and forming it into eggs, serving it on a nest of chiffonaded romaine, a nod to the Lenten season. I'm sure this must have been fun to eat, cracking through the crisp panko crust to get at the silky risotto and the liquid ragù.



Shepherd's Pie. What to do with a lamb saddle? Answering that question is how we arrived at this dish. I think it was Tony's idea to stuff it with all the mirepoix and seasoning that we usually put into shepherd's pie. While we were reinterpreting the classic, we decided to put the mash (in this case, parsnip and celery root) on the bottom, down on the plate, to hold the rounds of lamb loin roulade. I boned the saddle such that the tenderloin and the top loin (both sides of the T-bone) were intact and rolled it so that the top loin wrapped the tenderloin, the rare part you see in the center. Quite successful. Travis' stuffing was dynamite.



Apricot Tart. Bad Ed! Bad Chef! This dessert was way too big for a tasting. But I really couldn't help myself. The tart crust is shortbread, heavy on cornstarch so that it is light and crisp. This is topped with lemon curd, light on sugar so that it remains tart, and moistened dried apricots. In the background, you see a phyllo cup with vanilla bean ice cream. Crème anglaise over everything. Too much! I promise I will try harder to come up with smaller dessert courses in the future (not really!).

Wellness Festival Recipes

Today, I was invited to give a demonstration of some healthy recipes at the Community Wellness Festival. My talk/demo today hit the same three points that I made last year when I cooked at the festival: 1. Include more fresh/raw vegetables in your diet. 2. Make smart ingredient choices without sacrificing flavor and texture. 3. Get most of your protein from beans, legumes, and fish.

First up was a raw salad of fennel and oranges: healthy for you, tasty, and very crunchy. Second was a hash of sweet potatoes with dried cranberries and pecans, showcasing the carotenes and potassium of sweet potatoes, along with the goodness of fruit and nuts. Finally was a salsa, bright and tasty, that I incorporated into a bean salad with Sea Island red peas and that I put into a whole wheat wrap with pan-roasted catfish, for a tasty and healthy take on a fish taco.



Fennel Orange Salad. I figure a lot of people have seen fennel in the grocery store and have no clue what to do with it. I wanted to show how friendly and easy this vegetable is. This salad combines oranges, fennel, roasted olives, and a touch of feta cheese.

1 large fennel bulb, julienned
2 tablespoons fennel greens, finely sliced
zest of one orange
3 seedless oranges, sectioned
1/2 cup roasted olives (recipe follows)
1/4 cup feta cheese crumbles
2 teaspoons extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Mix all ingredients in a bowl. Season to taste. I covered how to section citrus fruit some years ago. See this post if you are unfamiliar with how to do it.

Roasted Olives

1/2 cup mixed olives, pitted
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 pinch red pepper flakes
4-5 fresh rosemary needles, minced
1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds
1 pinch black pepper

Toss all ingredients and place on a sheet tray. Heat in a hot oven (400F) until sizzling, about 10 minutes.



Bourbon Flambéed Sweet Potato Hash. This is a quick and fun take on hash. I often make this with slab bacon at the restaurant, but omitted the bacon given the health-oriented nature of today's presentation. Sweet potatoes are fairly nutrient dense and are a reasonable choice instead of standard potatoes, but they do have a fairly high glycemic index.

1 medium sweet potato, about a pound, diced
1 medium yellow onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 ounce bourbon
1/2 cup sweetened dried cranberries
1/2 cup toasted pecans
salt and pepper to taste

Heat a saute pan over high heat and add the sweet potatoes. Cook 2-3 minutes, stirring to keep from sticking. Add the onions and cook until translucent 2-3 minutes. Add the garlic and cook another minute. Add the bourbon and let it burn off. Check a sweet potato for doneness. If it needs to cook a bit more, add a couple tablespoons of water to the pan to help the sweet potatoe steam. When the sweet potatoes are done, add the cranberries and pecans, mix well and season to taste.



Basic Grape Tomato Salsa. I introduced this because every seems to love salsa and despite it being simple to make, nobody seems to make it at home, relying instead on terrible store-bought salsa. I also wanted to highlight salsa as a great means of introducing flavor and texture to dishes, without adding calories.

1 pint grape tomatoes, halved
1/2 small red onion, finely diced
3 green onions, sliced
2 tablespoons minced cilantro
2 garlic cloves, minced
juice of one lime to taste
1 small hot pepper in fine dice to taste
salt to taste

Mix the tomatoes, onions, cilantro and garlic. Add lime juice, hot pepper and salt to taste.

For ideas of what to do with salsa, I cooked a small catfish filet and put it in a whole wheat wrap with lettuce, cilantro, and salsa for a quick and healthy take on a fish taco. And I mixed salsa with cooked beans, in this case, Sea Island red peas, a heritage pea from Georgia (see photo below). You can use any canned or cooked bean for a quick bean salad.

Chef's Table

For what will be most likely my final blog post of 2010, I wanted to post some photos of a recent Chef's Table. We hold these each Thursday at 6pm at the table in our back bar next to the kitchen. We only seat a maximum of 8 diners each week. Five to six courses paired with wines for $60: a deal no matter how you slice it and even more of a deal once you consider the labor.


Arancino of Porcini Risotto. Isn't this a gorgeous photo? First, thanks to Billie Clifton of Sunflower Cottage for all the beautiful herbs, greens, and flowers this winter. We made balls of wickedly good and creamy porcini risotto, rolled them in panko, and deep fried them for an addictively good amuse bouche. We made some extras for chef snackies. I loved the contrast between the crunchy crust and the sinfully creamy interior.



Fall Salad. This is a salad I came up with several years ago and it has featured on our late fall and early winter menus ever since, such a hit with customers it is. I don't like to repeat dishes that are on our dinner menu on our tasting menus, but this salad is so good that I want everyone to try it. This salad popped into my head at the farmers market one bleak Saturday when I needed a salad for that night's menu and nothing green was to be found. In classic Asian fashion, this salad has sweet and crunch from the Asian pears, salt and spice from the pecans, and earthy creaminess from the butternut squash. It's all bound with an apple cider reduction and topped with earthy Bull's Blood beets. I love this salad.



Winter Bounty. There may not be a vast selection of items at the farmers market in December, but we can do some cool things with what there is. This is a napoleon featuring three layers of parsnip latkes sandwiching layers of mustard greens and cavolo nero, standing in a pool of butternut squash cream. This dish is enough to make me turn vegetarian. All the flavors play together so well.



Cassoulet. This menu so far has been tamely vegetarian. Time to turn on the meat! This is pork and beans amped up with copious quantities of duck fat and house-cured duck confit. We made this cassoulet with Steuben Yellow Eye Beans, an heirloom variety that keeps it shape while becoming sinfully creamy inside. The French only wish they had this bean for their cassoulets. We make our cassoulet with amazing Virginia sausages and smoked slab bacon, keeping it as local as we can and keeping the local cardiologists in funds.



Pork, Pork, Pork. Did I mention that I could happily be a vegetarian except for one small problem? Pork products. Yep, I'd walk five miles for a taste of pork confit. This is a mini-homage to my friend the pig and one that hopped into my mind a couple of days ago while eyeing the pan of leftover ossobuco of pork from our company Christmas party. What if we debone the osso, reshape it into disks, wrap it in prosciutto, crisp it in a pan, and serve it in a bowl of smoky pork jus? What if indeed! This is one sexy pork dish, with its crown of sausage and duck fat-roasted brussels sprouts!



Apple Crumble. I'm not a dessert guy. Give me another glass of wine and a piece of cheese and some fruit after dinner and I'm really happy. So my desserts tend to be more savory, less sweet, and fruit-driven. And I guess 2010 has been the year of deconstructed, scattered desserts for me. If you look back at my dessert photos over the year, there seems to be a theme. Traditional apple crumble has been selling like hotcakes this fall and winter. This is a reworking in which the apples, the apple cider glaze, the crumble topping, and the vanilla bean gelato have all been pulled apart and reassembled. The crumble topping is in the form of a cookie, the result of another what-if. What if we bake the crumble topping too long? Sometimes good things come of curiosity!

Recent Photos

Here are a couple of recent photos from the restaurant.


Here is one of our flats of blood sorrel, just waiting to be picked for garnish. Blood sorrel has that great lemony oxalic acid zing of any other sorrel and it looks great on the plate too. We only ever use this in raw applications.


And finally after waiting all summer, our first batch of field peas (aka cowpeas, cream peas, crowder peas) is in. These are the traditional purple hulls (the ones with the eyes) and the cream peas called Zipper, the larger ones without the eyes.

Chef's Tasting

"Cockles and Chorizo", Wine Pairing: Broadbent Vinho Verde 2008


"Shrimp Cocktail"—pickled shrimp, caperberry, baby cucumber with bloom, glass rimmed with cumin salt, cocktail: tomato juice, mussel broth, lime juice, cilantro juice, cumin, sherry vinegar, gold tequila


"Piquillos and White Beans"—parfait layers of brunoise of piquillo pepper and Tuscan "refried beans," green layer flavored with pesto, tan layer flavored with rosemary, Wine Pairing: La Slina Gavi di Gavi "Giorgio Cichero" 2008


"Morel Risotto"—onion and Carr Valley Shepherd's Blend cheese risotto napping a hidden poached quail egg (surprise!), crispy morel mushroom, Parmesan tuile, fresh thyme leaves, Wine Pairing: Clifton Springs Pinot Noir Sonoma Coast 2007


"Duck and Veal Ravioli"—raviolo stuffed with Moulard duck and local veal ragù, roasted romanesco, romanesco brown butter mousse (killer!), Wine Pairing: Cristom Syrah Willamette Valley 2005


"Oxtail Empanada"—chimichurri down on the plate, shredded oxtail, crispy polenta, radishes, pickled cipollini, pea shoots, johnny jump ups, Wine Pairing: Boxwood Winery "Boxwood" Virginia 2007


"New York-Style Cheesecake"—mini cheesecakes, poached dried apricots, almond brittle, Moscato d'Asti sabayon, crumbled amaretti, Wine Pairing: Vietti Moscato d'Asti "Cascinetta" 2008

Pasta e Fagioli

Winter always finds me cooking comfort food for myself and my family and among my very favorite comfort foods is pasta e fagioli, the classic Italian pasta and bean dish that is associated primarily with Tuscany, home of the mangiafagioli, the bean eaters. Like the recipes for most comfort foods around the world, the recipe for pasta e fagioli varies widely, sometimes a soup, sometimes a thick stew, sometimes with tomatoes, sometimes without, sometimes with red wine, sometimes with white—you get the idea. With no further introduction, then, here is my version. Please enjoy.

Pasta e Fagioli

extra virgin olive oil
3-4 ounces pancetta, in small dice
1 carrot, in small dice
1 onion, in small dice
2 stalks celery, in small dice
12 fresh sage leaves, finely minced
4 sprigs fresh Italian parsley, finely minced
8 branches fresh thyme, leaves picked
1 small branch rosemary, finely minced
salt and pepper, to taste
8 cloves garlic, minced
crushed red pepper flakes, to taste
2 tablespoons tomato paste (Italian doppio concentrato)
½ cup dry white wine
2 cups broth or water
½ pound dried cannellini, soaked and precooked
   (or 2 15-ounce cans cannellini)
1 pound ditalini
Grated cheese

Film the bottom of a heavy soup pot with extra virgin olive oil. Over high heat, cook the pancetta, onions, carrots, celery, fresh herbs, and a pinch of salt and pepper for several minutes, until the vegetables start to brown.

Add the minced garlic, red pepper flakes, and the tomato paste. Continue to cook, stirring often, until the garlic smells wonderful and the tomato paste starts to caramelize on the bottom of the pan.

Pour in the white wine and deglaze the bottom of the pan. Let the wine evaporate by half, then add the broth or water. Instead of broth or water, you could use bean cooking broth or even pasta cooking water. Add the beans and bring up to a simmer.

While the beans and vegetables are marrying over a low flame, bring the pasta water to a boil and cook the ditalini to almost done. Strain the ditalini and add to the beans. Adjust the liquid and seasonings to your liking.

Serve in deep soup plates and drizzle extra virgin olive oil over the top and sprinkle with grated cheese. Pasta e fagioli pairs brilliantly with a simple light Italian red such as a Langhe Nebbiolo or a Tuscan Sangiovese.

Ribollita, My Way (con Anitra)

Now that the weather has turned cool, my mind has turned to cool weather dishes such as hearty soups, stews, and braises. And beans! There is nothing better on a cold winter night than a huge bowl of steaming white bean soup, a loaf of bread, some excellent olive oil, a glass of red wine, and someone to share it with.

Last weekend, I taught a Tuscan cooking class as a fundraiser at a private house and our secondo was a bowl of ribollita, Tuscan bean soup, my style. I emphasize my style because everyone's ribollita (meaning "re-boiled" or recooked in the oven until it crusts over in the style of cassoulet) is different and small land wars have been fought over whether ribollita contains, for example, tomato. Of course (Mario Batali, this means you!) it does not! ;)

My way, this time, involves duck because I love the richness and silkiness that it brings to the soup, and the way that its essential flavors complement the earthy neutrality of the beans. Add to this the classic white bean seasonings of thyme, rosemary, lots of sage, pancetta, and celery root and you have a soup fit for a king.

Of course, ribollita is a simple soup that you can make from canned beans and whatever vegetables you have in the refrigerator, but I'm aiming for something more fabulous, more restaurant worthy here. I'm going to give you the whole three-day process for the soup I made so you can see what pains we chefs go to build layers of flavors and then you should feel very free to use what shortcuts you will to get your soup on the table to feed your crew in the time and with the energy you have available.

Before we get into the recipe and procedure, let's talk about beans. The Mangia-Fagioli (the bean eaters, the Tuscans) use the best beans that they can find. Most make ribollita from the large white kidney beans called Cannellini or Cannelloni; Tuscan chefs to whom beans are important use the rare Sorana bean. Me, I use a bean that puts the Cannellini to shame: the Steuben Yellow Eye. This is a bean that does not break down, has a thin skin, and a creamy interior, just perfect for ribollita. Trust me, if the Tuscans had this bean, they would use it. It's worth your while to seek it out.

Day 1: Marinating the Duck, Soaking the Beans

Duck Marinade

4 duck legs
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons fresh thyme leaves
black pepper
extra virgin olive oil

Rub the duck legs with extra virgin olive oil, garlic, pepper, and thyme. Store covered in the refrigerator at least overnight.

Beans

1 pound (500g) white beans
water to cover

Wash the beans and pick through them to remove any debris and damaged beans. Most dried beans expand by about three-fold during rehydration, so cover them in plenty of water and leave on the counter to soak overnight.

Day 2: Making the Duck Stock, Cooking the Beans

Duck Stock, Part 1

marinated duck legs
2 bay leaves
water to cover

In a deep pan, cover the duck legs and bay leaves in cold water and bring slowly to the simmer. Skim any scum that forms on the stock, but leave the fat in the pan. Cook until the duck is very tender, about two hours. Remove the duck from the stock and place on a sheet tray to cool. Skim 1/2- to 3/4-cup of the duck fat from the stock and reserve for the next step. When the duck is cool to the touch, separate the meat from the skin and bones. Pull the meat into bite-sized pieces and refrigerate. Use the stock and the reserved skin and bones in the next step.

Duck Stock, Part 2

1/2- to 3/4-cup reserved duck fat
duck skin and bones
2 large carrots, roughly chopped
2 stalks of celery, roughly chopped
leaves from two leeks (save the bottoms for the soup), roughly chopped
duck stock from previous step

Heat your oven to hot, 450F. In an ovenproof sauté pan large enough to hold the duck bones and vegetables, heat the duck fat. Add the bones, skin, and vegetables. Stir frequently until the vegetables begin to caramelize. Place the pan in the oven and roast, stirring every few minutes until the bones, skin, and vegetables are well caramelized. Remove the vegetables and bones to a stockpot and return the sauté pan to the stove top over medium high flame and deglaze with a few ladles of duck stock, scraping to get all the fond (caramelized bits) off the bottom of the sauté pan and into the stock. Once the pan is deglazed, pour the stock over the bones and vegetables and add all the remaining stock to the stock pot.

Let the stock simmer for two to three hours, then strain the solids from the stock. Discard the solids and refrigerate the stock. Leave the fat on top of the stock. Not only will it be easier to separate it when it is solid, but you'll use it again to cook the vegetables for the soup.

Cooking the Beans

Drain the beans that you have presoaked at least overnight. Place in a soup pan and cover with fresh water. Bring up to a slow boil and cook for 45 minutes. At this point, add a couple of teaspoons of salt to the water and continue cooking until the beans are just tender. Turn off the flame and let the beans cool in their liquid. Refrigerate the beans in their liquid overnight.

Day 3: Finishing the Soup

Start by pulling the duck fat off the stock and saving both the stock and the fat. You'll need some fat for this soup and you'll want the rest for some other recipe, such as duck fat home fries.

2 quarts duck stock
cooked beans
reserved duck meat
1/2 cup reserved duck fat
6 ounces pancetta, in small cubes
1 celery root, peeled and diced
2 leeks, cleaned and diced
6 cloves garlic, minced
12 sage leaves, finely sliced
2 bay leaves
1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves
1 sprig fresh rosemary
1 pound cavolo nero (Black Tuscan Kale), sliced into ribbons
salt and pepper to taste

Put the duck stock, beans and their liquid, and the duck meat in a soup pot over high flame. When it comes up to a boil, reduce to a simmer. Meanwhile, heat a large sauté pan over high flame. Add the duck fat and let it melt. Sauté the pancetta, celery root, leeks, and garlic until well wilted. Add to the soup pot. Add the sage, bay, thyme, and rosemary. Let simmer for 45 minutes to an hour for the flavors to come together. Twenty minutes before serving, stir in the cavolo nero so that it will just be cooked when you are ready to serve the soup. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Remove the bay leaves and rosemary. Serve with grilled crostini and lots of extra virgin olive oil to drizzle over the soup.

Sometimes I serve this as a clear soup. Sometimes I mash a few of the beans against the side of the pot to give the broth some body. Sometimes I add pieces of crusty bread to the soup and let it fall apart in the soup, giving it some body. And, I like to refrigerate the soup over night, then place it in an enameled cast iron casserole and bake it in a slow oven the next day for many hours, folding the crust back into the soup every hour or so in true ribollita fashion.

I've staged this recipe in three easy days of work. Of course, you could jam it into one; you could use canned beans and premade stock (or even water); you could substitute ham for the duck. I wanted to show you the full recipe so that you would appreciate how we go about doing what we do, but I certainly don't expect you to cook like this at home. I do hope that you will use this as inspiration to put a great white bean soup on your table for your family and friends.

So Many Beans, So Little Time....

In speaking with customers and shoppers at the local farmers market, I can sense a little confusion about some of the lookalike shell beans that are for sale now. Here are three that I picked up this morning. From left to right, bird egg beans (which are very similar to Italian borlotti and inspired a Virginia Living article on the restaurant), dragon tongue beans (which are a wax bean used both as a fresh bean, shown here, and a shell bean later in the fall), and cranberry beans.

From a culinary point of view, these beans are all interchangeable. You can use any of them with excellent results in any fresh or dried bean recipe. What you don't want to do is mix them in the same recipe, unless you cook each type separately, because they all have different cooking times. As you can see, the rounder bird eggs are significantly larger and will take much longer to cook than the smaller and longer cranberry beans. For my trivially simple and utterly favorite recipe for fresh shell beans, refer to the bird egg post from last summer.

And now I'm off to the deck to shell some beans before lunch starts. It will be great to sit and be productive while letting my mind wander, and the results are going to be incredible tonight as a base for the lamb shanks from Virginia Lamb that I braised last evening.

Dragon Tongue Beans

Here's a photo of the beautiful Dragon Tongue beans that we are getting at the farmers market now. I have read about these beans for years and seen them many times in seed catalogs, but this is my first experience with them. And I'm in love. Territorial Seed says, "Dragon Tongue is probably the best multipurpose bean available." Amen. This bean tastes better than any I have had in the last 25 years.

Dragon Tongue is an old French variety called Dragon Langerie that was apparently re-established in the Netherlands. It's a moderately long flat yellow (wax) bean with purple streaks and mottling that disappears when cooked. This very tender stringless bean is excellent raw and as a fresh bean and couldn't be simpler to prepare. I am waiting for the fall to try it out as a shell bean, for which it has an excellent reputation.

We are currently bias cutting the bean into small pieces and sautéeing it in clarified butter with shallots to order. Done this way, the bean is incredibly delicious.

They are available now at the Freight Station Farmers Market from Mark Bishop of Master's Touch Plants & Produce from Berkeley Springs, WV. Mark tells me that they are a very prolific bush bean and that we can continue to look forward to them for a while longer.