Mark your calendar—I’ll be doing another live cooking show at the Waffle Shop, 124 S. Highland, on Sunday, June 20, beginning at approximately 12:30 pm.
Please attend if you are able! Ask questions from the audience or even join me on stage of you would like. Or, watch streaming video of the event at www.waffleshop.org.
The main advantage to attending is the chance to taste, so please celebrate Father’s Day with me at the Waffle Shop!
It’s been about a week since I’ve been expecting to taste fresh, local strawberries.
The ones I’ve been expecting grow very close by: in my back yard. I planted them this year and they seem to be doing quite well. Every day or two, I’ll look out at them and see a strawberry on the verge of ripeness. I’ll examine it, and decide that the tinge of pink isn’t quite red enough to pluck just yet; the pale green beneath the leaves is too reminiscent of one of those low-flavor berries imported from out of state. Instead, I’ll leave it, and when I go out the next day to check it again, it’s gone.
Yesterday, I spotted Flopsy Mopsy Cottontail hopping through our backyard from the vicinity of the strawberry plants. I have a feeling she’s grabbing the berries before I have a chance to get them. Either that or it’s the mysterious Greenfield garden thief who to date is suspected of filching my weed whacker, my wife’s hydrangea blossoms, my neighbor’s tomato plant (dug from the ground!), and, most recently, a terra cotta pot of oregano and tarragon that my mom had just delivered from Massachusetts and three hanging baskets of spider plants. But since one of the berries was left with teeth marks gnawed into it, I suspect the rabbit of this robbery.
Thank goodness for Farmer MacGregor! There was a quart of strawberries in our Penn’s Corner CSA box yesterday. Bright red berries, without a hint of green. Succulent, juicy, flavorful berries that transported me back to the field at the pick-your-own berries place my family went to every year, where I must’ve eaten a quart for every pint I picked. Vibrant, intense, amazing natural sweetness. they were incredible.
Strawberry season is short, life is long. Do yourself a favor: leave the office a little early today and swing by the farmers’ market on the way home. Today is the opening day of Farmers At Phipps—or, if Squirrel Hill isn’t convenient for you, follow the link anyway, and enter your zip code into the box at the top right side of the screen. PASA’s search function will identify farms, farmers’ markets, and more local food resources that are close to your home. Once you know where your local resources are, it’ll make it that much easier for you to take advantage of them. Believe me—once you bite into a seasonal strawberry, you’ll be hooked on local freshness.
Don’t forget! Ingredients will be showing at Hartwood Acres this Sunday evening (June 6), at 7 pm; accompanied by a question and answer session with local food experts and farmers. The event is free and open to the public—I hope to see you there!
Mark your calendars and come out to the Hartwood Acres amphitheater on Sunday, June 6 at 7:00 pm to watch the movie “Ingredients” and participate in a forum and discussion with several individuals active in the local foods scene.
Ingredients is the type of movie that reminds us how much we have to be thankful for in Western Pennsylvania, where we’re surrounded by a productive rural landscape and local foods abound. And yet, there is still room for growth, still more that we can do to make certain that the production and availability of local foods is a truly sustainable phenomenon and will bless our region for generations to come.
This is Allegheny County’s first event of this nature. The availability of fresh foods is important to us all. Come show your support, learn something new, and meet some of the key players in the local foods movement, including Mindy Schwartz of Garden Dreams. There will be a question and answer session with Mindy and other local foods experts—a great opportunity for you to find out more about where you can shop and what you can do to support local farmers and grow your own local foods.
A trailer for “Ingredients” can be found at the film’s website, www.ingredientsfilm.com. Watch it—I think you’ll be intrigued.
I went shopping at the Farmers @ The Firehouse Market this morning to get my ingredients for my Kick Ass Cookery with Corduroy Orange live from the Waffle Shop cooking show; combined what I bought with some pickings from my garden; gathered my spices and my cooking equipment…. In short, I prepared everything I needed for today except for taking a camera to snap a picture of what I made (D’oh!). But, here are instructions in case you’d like to have Pork Chop Waffles with Rhubarb and Ramp Sauce.
Cut the green, leafy tops of the ramps and the spring garlic away from their denser bottom sections. Set the tops aside for later and cut the bottoms into a fine dice.
Start the diced garlic and ramp bottoms caramelizing in a hot pan with a bit of oil (enough to cover the bottom of the pan), some pepper, some ginger, and some kosher salt. Stir frequently so that the onions’ natural sugars toast in the hot oil but do not scorch and burn.
Meanwhile, cut the rhubarb into 1/2-inch chunks and add them to the pan as the garlic and ramps approach the point when, should you caramelize them further, they would run the risk of burning. Provide the rhubarb with a very small pinch of salt and stir it in with the ramps and garlic.
Remove the stems from the kale and the kohlrabi. Cut the greens into thin ribbons, and add them to the pan. Saute them briefly, then add the flour and stir the flour in to combine with the oil that the vegetables are sauteing in. Once you have formed a roux around the vegetables, add the cider, slowly, and stir it in to combine with the roux. Let simmer for a few minutes, and adjust the consistency of the sauce with vegetable stock as necessary.
For the pork chop, craft a spice mix from the spices and the kosher salt. Use as much pepper as you would like to reach your tolerance for spiciness. Temper with ginger, equivalent to perhaps 1/3 of the pepper you have used. Stir in a pinch of cardamom—a little dab’ll do you! This spice is bitter in large quantities—and enough salt to balance the spices. Taste the result. Adjust as needed until you have the taste you desire. Rub this mix on the pork chop and then sear the chop in a hot cast iron pan (in order to get the sauce and the chop done at the same time, sear the chop at about the same time as you’re crafting the roux to make the sauce. It helps to have an assistant in order to accomplish both tasks simultaneously).
Once the one side has seared, turn the chop over and cover your cast iron pan with the saute pan that you have made the sauce in. This will help keep the finished sauce warm whilst (and at the same time as) trapping more heat around the pork chop to help it cook all the way through.
As the second side of the pork chop cooks, slice a few inches of rhubarb into very thin pieces and stir it into the sauce to add a second, fresher and tarter layer of rhubarb flavor. Slice the mustard greens and the tops of the ramps and green garlic into thin ribbons to use as a garnish.
Flip the pork chop once more to reheat the first side and prod the pork chop with your fingers to make sure it feels done. If you;re in doubt, feel free to slice it open to check out the inside. An appropriately cooked pork chop will still have a pale pink hue to the center.
Serve the pork chop atop a freshly cooked waffle. Spoon a line of the rhubarb and ramp sauce across the waffle such that it covers a corner of the pork chop, leaving at least half of the chop exposed to display the crust that has developed from searing the spice rub. Top it all off with a small pile of the thinly-sliced mustard, ramp, and garlic greens.
Meat and produce used for the creation of this waffle was purchased from the following farms:
Find all of these farmers and more every Saturday at the Farmers @ The Firehouse market in the Strip District.
Thanks also to Sophia for appearing on camera today. Unless that thanks should go to Sofia. I’m actually not quite sure how she spells her name….
What’s in my garden this year
Though I live in Pittsburgh, and I don’t have much land, I try to make the most of it and grow as many different crops as I can. Ordinarily, as we approach Mother’s Day weekend, I would be figuring out what I want to plant first in my garden and making plans to get the plants. This year, though, I paid a little more attention to plants that can go in the ground earlier and have a decent start. Plus, I have a fondness for perennials—so long as they’re willing to keep coming back, that’s one fewer plant I have to worry about each year. Nonetheless, I’m still kind of impressed by how many foodstuffs I already have going—not to mention the ones that haven’t gone in the ground yet!
In my garden already:
Saturday at Penn Mac: cheese in hand, approaching the checkout, taking a look around the produce. The bulk mushrooms, as usual, were dried out and older looking. Not a hot pepper to be seen. Red bells, as usual, looked good and were selling for the same price as their green peppers. Avocados are cheap, sure, why not, let’s grab a couple. Anything else?
The plums looked good.
The PLU stickers said “Chile.” I knew they’d been shipped across the continent to get here. But, the plums looked good.
They reminded me of summer days when I’d pluck similar-looking fruit from my family’s fruit bowl and bite through tart, crisp skin into moist, syrupy flesh. The peculiar sensation of having your mouth pucker and smile at the same time. The dribble of juice that escapes and runs down your chin and onto your t-shirt.
I bought four. I ate two today. There was no tartness, no juice, no moistness to the flesh. The body was pasty and the flavor was dull. It was, beyond question, the out of season fruit I should have recognized it to be when I read the country of origin, as clearly marked on the sticker: Chile is approximately 5,000 miles away from Pittsburgh. That’s a long distance for a fruit to travel.
Caveat imperator—that’s Latin for, “You should’ve known better, stupid!”
PLEASE NOTE—THE DATE AND TIME HAVE BOTH BEEN CHANGED (for the earlier)!
Live this Saturday, May 8, 12:00(ish) pm at the Waffle Shop and live online at www.waffleshop.org
This Saturday, May 8, I will be presenting “Kick Ass Cookery with Corduroy Orange!” live from the Waffle Shop. For the inaugural episode, I’ll be crafting non-traditional waffle toppings (so as to exercise a bit of synergy with the venue). If you’re in Pittsburgh, come on down to watch me cook and heckle me from the audience (questions from the floor will be accepted, encouraged, and responded to). Samples will be distributed following the demonstration, and all recipes used will be posted on Corduroy Orange after the demonstration.
The cookery is scheduled to begin at 12:00 pm. May 8 is the day before Mother’s Day, so please feel free to bring any mothers or children with whom you may associate. There’s no better way to say, “I love you, Mom!” than by treating her to a waffle accompanied by live cooking demonstrations.
If you’re not local, you don’t necessarily have to miss out on the kickkassery of the event. Please tune in to watch streaming video at www.waffleshop.org. Unfortunately, due to limits on what can be streamed over the internet, samples will not be distributed to those in the virtual audience.
One of my favorite times of the year is asparagus season. That’s why I planted a few asparagus plants in my garden last year. I still don’t know much about the cultivation and harvest of the plants, but I have a full year to research and figure it out, as the one thing I do know about it is that there’s a three-year lag between when asparagus is planted and when one ought to harvest their first crop.
Just because I can’t pull it out of my own yard doesn’t mean that I can’t enjoy fresh, local asparagus. I bought six bunches from Janowski Farm Market on Rt. 30 in Clinton (near the airport). It is their own crop, and they are selling it for $2.50/pound; three pounds for $6.
When I stopped by Soergel Orchard in Wexford last week, the sign outside proclaimed that asparagus would be coming soon! A quick phone call to Soergel today confirms that asparagus has arrived. They are selling their crop for $2.78/ pound. Other options for purchasing asparagus in Wexford include Kaelin Farm Market and Eichner’s Farm Market, but neither has any asparagus in stock yet (both say soon!).
In Pittsburgh, the East End Food Co-op reports local purple asparagus freshly arrived to the store. Their price is $5.99/ pound.
Should you come across another source of local asparagus, please leave a comment below to help others bask in the glory of one of the first crops of spring!
They’ve got limited hours, and an unusual business model, but the Waffle Shop really does have what they advertise: waffles.
Located at 124 S. Highland Ave., the Waffle Shop is a “community arts venue and restaurant” that is a joint venture of the Carnegie Mellon School of Art and several community action groups. The venue is open late nights Friday and Saturday plus brunch Saturday and Sunday, and features a live, web-streamed talk show in which a rotating cadre of hosts interview restaurant guests on camera.
I (as many already know) love waffles, but because the Waffle Shop’s hours are so irregular, I had never actually been to the restaurant until last night. But, after Haris Krijestorac, the Waffle Shop’s assistant marketing coordinator, emailed me to ask if I would visit their shop and write about it for this page, I decided to make a special effort to visit.
I was careful not to tell anyone at the venue who I was or what prompted me to visit. Nevertheless, I was recruited by the evening’s first talk show host, Matt, to serve as an on-camera guest. And despite Matt knowing nothing about me besides my first name, the conversation quickly turned to food as Matt asked me to recount my earliest memory of eating waffles. Soon, we were discussing kumquats (their taste and the merits of grilling them); eating kumquats that the kitchen staff was kind enough to ‘grill’ on their waffle irons for us, and by the time I was preparing to return to my seat, we were talking about the merits of pure maple syrup (offered in a 2-ounce portion with your waffle for an upcharge of $1, which, if you’ve looked at maple syrup prices lately is a bargain—generally one can anticipate that pure maple syrup retails in the neighborhood of $1 per ounce).
I know, I know–what about the waffles? I’m pleased to report that they’re good. The most interesting waffles on the menu were their daily specials (which I almost didn’t see despite the fact that the specials are emblazoned in 4-inch letters across the wall of the restaurant). I opted for the blueberry-mint waffle as I was in the mood for something sweet, but the coconut chicken curry special was mighty tempting. Additionally, they offer a savory waffle on their normal menu: encased with a layer of egg on one side and melted cheese on the other, this tasty waffle (which I sampled) features an inclusion of crumbled bacon. Other menu options include the bananas foster waffle, the classic waffle, an omelet in the shape of a waffle, and a chocolate chip waffle.
I wish that they had a couple more inclusions available for what might go inside the waffle (like pecans–I really love a pecan waffle.) But, I suppose that’s what the rotating daily special board is for. In the end, I was really quite pleased. I got a tasty waffle for a good price, and I got to participate in the evening’s entertainment as well (though I wish to stress that there is no requirement one dining in the restaurant appear on camera–that’s a strictly voluntary activity). having already volunteered to sit in the guest chair and talk, I must say, I think I’d be even more entertaining performing a Corduroy Orange cooking show live from the Waffle Shop–now, that would be some high quality entertainment!
Grow Pittsburgh will be hosting a dinner at the Quiet Storm Cafe (5430 Penn Avenue) tonight.
The menu will consist of an apple gazpacho, a red leaf lettuce and apple cider vinaigrette salad (featuring watermelon radishes—a really cool radish that has a green rind and a red center), homemade potato gnocchi, and a choice of lavender-vanilla pound cake or whoopie pie for dessert.
The cost is $25 per person. Reservations are recommended, and required for parties of 6 or more. Reservations can be made by calling the Quiet Storm at (412) 661-9355. Hope to see you there!
