The other issue with sourcing good eggs is that no one makes much money producing good eggs. The few who do make money at it are able to do so by selling at a premium directly to the consumer. They aren’t interested in any wholesale customers - they only produce a small amount and need to sell their eggs for the highest price possible. Raising and taking care of a small amount of chickens is hard work, and they deserve as much money as possible.
One thing I have learned about purchasing eggs is that if a farmer goes through the trouble of raising a variety of chickens, most likely they are also going through the trouble of making sure the chickens get a good diet and plenty of exercise. It’s a huge pain to have a variety of chickens, and no one is going to do it unless they care about the chickens, or they just want to sell their eggs for a really high price. Either way, they are going to need good quality eggs to get away with charging as much as they will need to in order for it be worth their time.
Moral of the story - when looking for good eggs, go smaller. Try to find a small producer who has a variety of different chickens and realize that you will have to pay for this. Anybody who has over 750 chickens probably won't be able to give them what they need to truly produce excellent eggs. Anybody that has less than 10,000 chickens or so won't even begin to be able to sell to a supermarket like Mom's or Whole Foods. At the end of the day, you are only going to get what you pay for. I suggest, as always, go to the farmer's markets and try everyone's eggs and see which ones you like best.
]]>I have lots of mixed feelings about risotto. On the one hand, I love it and I love making it. On the other, I know that 99.9% of the time when ordering risotto in a restaurant (or serving risotto in a restaurant), it is not done correctly. It can’t be. In a place where people want their food fast and relatively cheap, there is no way to cook every single order of risotto from scratch, from start to finish.
I remember one day, I told a cook of mine to make a risotto for some arancini we were going to cook for an event. He timidly informed me that he had never cooked risotto, which I found hard to believe since he was such a well versed and talented cook. We had cooked together in many restaurants and before me, he worked at Kinkead’s for about 10 years. I couldn’t believe it. I asked Bob Kinkead about it one day, and he said something along the lines of “Of course we didn’t serve risotto with our volume. If you can’t do something right, don’t do it at all.” Makes sense.
It seems like most traditional Italian food is just not designed for mass production, or any modern business at all. Their food comes from home cooking and was evolved to be made for family or visitors….maybe an occasional party or a festival. It was not designed for restaurants or wholesale or any type of mass production where consistency, speed, and profit are of primary concern. Whether it’s pasta, bread, risotto, sauces, etc…most Italian food has to be changed one way or another in order to make it fit into a modern business plan.
Good risotto is not very hard to make at home, there are just a couple key things to remember:
There are many different kinds of rice you can use for risotto. I have made it out of everything from arborio to sushi rice. There is truly no one better rice than the others, as they all have their place and purpose. Different aromas, flavors, and textures can compliment certain dishes better than others. That being said, unless you have been making risotto since you were three years old or for some other reason have made it at least a couple thousand times…you probably shouldn’t complicate it too much. If you want an overcooked, mushy risotto, which is perfect for any type of fried rice ball for example….use Arborio. For anything else, use Carnaroli. Acquerello makes, for the most part, the best Carnaroli rice available to us in the USA. You can probably find it at any European imports store, or just get it from us.
After the rice, the liquid you use is what is going to make the biggest difference. You need a full flavored stock. I am not going to get into making a stock as that is beyond the scope of this, but I will give you a tip. Once you have a stock made - bring it to a simmer about an hour before you plan on cooking your rice. Add a piece of roasted meat/bones and aromatic herbs in a cheesecloth, and let it simmer for an hour or so before you start. Leave it in there while you are making the risotto. If you are using a chicken stock, use a chicken carcass. If you are using a rabbit stock, use a rabbit carcass…and so on for whatever flavor you want. If you want to go all out - use an entire roasted chicken or rabbit! Later on, pick the meat and use it in something else. The only exception here is that if you are using seafood, you only want to precook the stock for 15 minutes as opposed to one hour. If you cook seafood too long it can get bitter and actually lose flavor.
A good risotto has 4 components. The rice, the stock, the soffritto, and the garnish or finishing elements.
A good basic soffritto would just be onions, olive oil, and white wine. The soffritto adds depth and complexity that you can’t get if you just added a stock to the rice. For seafood risottos, I like to add tomatoes, garlic, leeks, peppers, and saffron…..almost like a paella base.
For finishing, some people add dairy in the form of butter, heavy cream, unsweetened whipped cream, cheese….and this is all fine. Many things lose their aroma and flavor while cooking, like lemon juice or herbs for example. If using these, I like to add these at the very end as well. In fact, I try to never boil lemon juice in anything I’m making. The stock already has herbs, and maybe the soffritto as well, so a nice trick is to add just a touch at the end to bring back some the aromas that got lost while cooking. The recipe below is quite simple and doesn’t need much added at the end.
While this recipe may seem extravagant, it is actually quite simple and a great accompaniment to any meat you may be serving. If you don’t like truffles there is nothing wrong with omitting them from the recipe. If you want a vegetarian version, just use vegetable stock instead of chicken stock. This is really a great base recipe to add whatever you want to.
Black Truffle Risotto
*serves three
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Balsamic, or Balsamico, is different from wine vinegar in that it is made from the cooked and concentrated grape juice, called ‘mosto cotto’. Most balsamic made today is made primarily from Trebbiano grapes, which grow in the area where it is made - the Emilia-Romagna. They have a neutral flavor and nice acidity, which combine to make them a great base for vinegar.
The grapes are harvested in Autumn, and after being pressed and strained, they are cooked down and concentrated. Traditionally, this would be done in copper cauldrons over a wood fire. While the best producers still swear on the importance of having a wood fire for flavor, most balsamic made today is done in stainless steal vats over gas fire.
Concentrating grape juice has ancient Roman roots, and was a great way to preserve not only the grape juice but other fruits as well - like pears, quince, and underripe figs. These ‘fruit mustards’ (mostarda) are still made today and bear the root word coming from grapes - must.
Once the grape juice has been concentrated, two things happen. First, special yeasts (not regular wine yeasts) convert some of the sugars into alcohol. Next, bacteria convert the alcohol into acid, primarily acetic acid. These take place in casks. Traditionally, casks are a type of family heirloom. They are all unique and after decades, or even hundreds of years of use sometimes, they take on their own life. They are passed down from generation to generation. Sometimes people will give a child a gift of a cask, which they will keep for the duration of their life. Cask making and fixing is a craft in and of itself.
The balsamic casks are different than wine casks - they have a hole in the top that allows for oxygen to enter, which is necessary for making vinegar. They keep the casks in their attics, and as a result, the balsamic slowly evaporates with time - getting thicker and thicker.
Traditionally, there is a batch of balsamic made every year. There is a succession of casks, increasingly smaller. During the colder months of December, the balsamic gets really clear as the particles left in suspension from the acetobacteria start to precipitate. It is during this time that each batch is drained to top off the next smaller cask and fill to the previous year’s levels. When the vinegar is deemed ready to consume, sometimes after a couple decades, a small amount is drained before topping off.
As you can imagine, real balsamic was always considered a rare gift. The last thing one would do is put it in a pot and boil it to make some kind of ‘balsamic glaze’. Until the 70s, balsamic was never produced for commerce - it was just tradition. Really, it is too expensive and laborious to mass produce in the traditional way. It is always a little sad for me to see 100 year old balsamic for sale, as I imagine someone had probably hit hard times and was forced to sell off a family heirloom.
Sometimes you see a bottle of balsamic going for $300 or so and people are confused as to why it would cost so much. Really, the question is why does it cost so little. It is much more involved than wine, and a bottle of real balsamic goes a long way. You just use a little here and there - with some nice cheese or even gelato for example. Getting good balsamic in the USA is very hard, as good balsamic is rarely made in the quantities necessary for exporting.
I am pretty skeptical of any balsamic that is being sold commercially, especially in the USA, but I do enjoy balsamic and even if it is not the best in the world, there is some good balsamic available. We sell two types - one more modestly priced and one more expensive. I find both to be of good value, even if not quite the same as getting gifted balsamic by someone who spent 50+ years caring for it. Every “foody” should at least try some expensive balsamic once in their lifetime - it is truly incomparable.
I recommend getting thinner steaks (1/2 inch) if you like your steak cooked well done, and thicker steaks (1-2 inch) if you like it more rare. As always, I recommend purchasing meat from farmers at the farmer’s markets in the area. We get our meat from Springfield Farm or Liberty Delight Farm, so if you don’t want to go directly to them you can always purchase from us. Remember - the quantity and price required for a farmer to sell meat to a super market makes it impossible for it to be any good.
There is a story behind this pasta and it starts with eggs. Good eggs are a vital part of our business, so I am often visiting farms and seeking out the best eggs our area has to offer. Eggs are one of those things that really cannot be produced in a large quantity if you want to have a high quality product. As a result, we get our eggs from a few different suppliers at any given time. You meet all sorts of people at small egg farms. One day, I was visiting a small family operation in the area. I had spoken to one of them on the phone and arranged a visit to their farm. Shortly after arriving, I realized that things were ‘off’. They didn’t have any chickens - just cows and ducks - and they were blatantly racist, and insisted on bringing up the topic of race in every conversation. I wasn’t sure why they had lied to me about having eggs, but I came up with an excuse to leave quickly. Before I left, the wife gave me a couple ducks as a gift for my time. It was a bazaar situation and I haven’t spoken with them since that day.
Anyway, we are pasta makers - so when life gives us ducks….we make duck pasta. We happened to have some foie gras in our fridge, so we experimented and came up with this filling. I didn’t expect the pasta to go over too well, as many people in the area seem to be scared of eating duck. I was wrong. We sold out quickly, and all week I was getting phone calls and emails about when it will be offered again. It is to this day our most popular pasta at the farmer’s markets.
This is a very rich pasta and it generally isn't meant to be served as a huge meal in and of itself. I rarely eat more than four pieces of it myself. It can be served simply in a poultry broth or just with some brown butter and sage. We have a video tutorial on how to make brown butter and sage in the Cooking Instructions section of our site.
Here is a different recipe using asparagus. Our menu has a side of asparagus at the moment, which also goes great with this dish and makes preparing it simpler. Just chop up the asparagus and warm it up with a little EVOO or water.
Foie Gras and Duck Cappelletti with Asparagus and Brown Butter
*serves 2
I will always remember the first time I made a spelt pasta. I was working at an American restaurant and doing whatever I could do to experiment with different grains without anyone knowing it. One day I made spelt pappardelle and I remember the GM looking at it, making a disgusted face, and say 'what is thaaaat?'. Later on that day, I gave him the final dish without letting him know it was the pasta he had looked at earlier. He loved it and demanded to know why it was so good - what was different about it. I told him, and he wouldn't believe me until I showed him all the components. Finally he came around.
There are so many reasons to eat a variety of grains it is hard to know where to start. First of all, it’s good for the soil. Farmer’s NEED to grow a variety of crops in order to have healthy soil, and healthy soil is needed in order to have nutritious (and tasty) crops. Second, It’s healthy for us -eating healthy makes you feel good, both mentally and physically. Eating a wide variety of nutritious food is what we evolved to do. The reason we tend to eat so much wheat, soy, and corn products has nothing to do with some innate superiority of these plants - it has everything to do with how profitable they can be.
Spelt is another ancient grain (like Einkorn) with a gluten structure that is easier to digest than the newer varieties of wheat. If used in bread with a slower fermentation process, like the kind we use, it becomes even easier to digest. Maybe I’m biased, but I find that old fashioned traditional food and techniques tend to be healthier and taste better. It’s closer to what we have evolved to consume, unlike the factory food that lines the shelves of conventional grocery stores.
The spelt we use is grown by Grapewood Farm in Va. It is generally not available year round, so I use it as much as I can while it’s here. Right now you can find it in our Dry Spelt Fiorentini, Fougasse, and Minestrone.
Here is a great spring recipe that is excellent on its own or as a side to our Pork Chop, Salmon, or Wild Shrimp.
Spelt Fiorentini with Peas and Morels
*Yields two servings
Asparagus lose most of their natural sugars within 24 hours of being harvested. The way that they are harvested and kept is what makes the difference between eating something that tastes like cardboard and eating something that is still sweet and full of flavor (ie. nutrients). You can tell, to a certain extent, how fresh the asparagus is by examining the bottom - the less dried and hard it is, the fresher. Although it is best to eat as soon as possible once purchased, if you are going to store for a couple days, place the asparagus spears in a cup of water in the refrigerator - like flowers. You can even add a spoonful of sugar to the water if you know it is going to sit in there for a couple days. I only buy asparagus directly from the farmer, and at our farmer’s markets, there are plenty of great farmers who will be selling fresh asparagus for us to enjoy.
Good asparagus tastes great on its own - it doesn’t need a lot of fuss. The farmer’s do the hard work. I love to cook it on the grill as an easy side dish when I am grilling some fish or steak.
Grilled Asparagus with Parmesan
*Yields 4 servings
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