5 Honorary Meat Dishes

I'm a shameless carnivore, happy to be perched near the top of a providentially-designed food chain. I enjoy chunks of animal protein, I always have, and I always will. On this point, I share common ground with the Sage from Wasilla - "If God had not intended for us to eat animals, how come He made them out of meat?".

But even I find myself having meatless meals from time to time. Sometimes, my appetite strays from its carnivorous tendencies, and I find myself realizing after a tasty meal that there wasn't any meat involved in a perfectly satisfying entree. Those entrees never are fussy messes of too-sharp onion, mesclun that looks and tastes like lawn clippings, or tofu. Instead, they are classic meals that transcend the need for meat.

I propose that the following 5 entrees be considered honorary meat dishes, and henceforth be recognized as unifying meals that can cause vegetarians and meat-lovers to sit down together without compromising satisfaction or principle.

1. Pizza Margherita: Dough, tomatoes, cheese and basil baked together in a pie that satisfies. Inspired by royalty, the classic Pizza Margherita's ingredients achieve a purity that can only be sullied by pepperoni or italian sausage.

2. Macaroni and Cheese: Many of us lived on boxed versions of this during college years of relative poverty, and sumptuous new takes on the recipe often include lobster or pancetta. They're all good, but the good old classic, with bread crumbs on top, deserves a spot in the pantheon of great meals.

3. Falafel: I was in college when a friend introduced me to fried globs of ground up chickpeas in pita bread; he told me it was the "Big Mac" of Israel. Falafel has been among my favorite foods ever since - a great one has flavors and textures that can blow you away.

4. Welsh Rabbit (or rarebit): It seems too simple to be satisfying, and too small to be filling. But the toasted english muffin with a savory, rich cheddar sauce described in The Vegetarian Epicure cookbook caught our attention back during the Reagan administration, and its simple satisfaction has remained a favorite. Served with a hearty ale, it's a warming meal.

5. Pierogies: I may be a bit ahead of the curve on this one, in that pierogies are not as universally known or appreciated as pizza or mac cheese, but, trust me, these over-sized mutant ravioli are Polish soul food. Locally, Pieroguys are soon to open a cafe in the River Market, and their frozen offerings are found in a few grocery stores. Closer to home, you can make my mother's version by following my narrative recipe.
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What else belongs on this list? Eggplant parmesan, grilled cheese sandwiches, spaghetti with marinara sauce, portabella sandwiches?

Real Ragu Sauce Doesn't Come in Jars

It's ironic that if you mention ragu to most Americans, they think of the epitome of convenience - jarred spaghetti sauce. If you mention it to someone who has tasted the real thing, though, it conjures almost the opposite mental image - meat cooked for hours in sauteed vegetables and sauce until it falls apart into shreds, creating a luscious, rich sauce with incredible meatiness.

On Sunday, I prepared this masterpiece for friends with a couple culinary quirks. One does not eat ground meats, and one is allergic to onions. The proscription on ground beef was not a problem for ragu - only bastardized short-cut recipes employ ground beef, but the absence of onions called for a bit of adaptation. I increased the celery and garlic substantially - I would have happily substituted shallots, but I wasn't sure if the onion allergy would extend to shallots. I'll do a lot to increase depth of flavor, but putting a friend into anaphylactic shock seems extreme.

To make my version, I started with 4 pounds of boneless beef chuck short ribs. These have become my go-to meat for stews, chilis, and other recipes where "stew meat" might otherwise be called for. The meat is marbled, tender, tasty and easily available at Costco.

Most recipes call for the meat to be browned in oil, but I'm a Kansas Citian, and I love my grill, so I browned the meat close to charring and made the neighbors drool. I figure that by dripping the fat through the grill, I may be avoiding a little bit of fat in the sauce, and it adds a better flavor than I can ever achieve by browning in a saute pan. That's just Kansas City Culinary Improv - if you prefer to brown the meat on a stove top, then do so.

After the meat was seared on the grill, I roughly chopped a few carrots and 6 stalks of celery, and minced around 12 cloves of garlic. That went into a big pot with some olive oil, and I sauteed them until they started to soften up. While that was going on, I added the meat after cutting it into chunks, and I added a few sprigs of fresh rosemary and a similar amount of fresh thyme. I rummaged through our dry spice jars and tossed other things in - I think some bay leaves, oregano, sage and basil made their way to the pan, along with salt and a generous grinding of pepper.

Let me tell you, meat, garlic, celery and herbs sauteing in olive oil makes wonderful kitchen perfume.

After the vegetables had started to soften, I added a bottle of red wine. Not great red wine, but not "cooking wine", either. I used a cab/merlot blend, but a great dry Italian red would have been more authentic. I simmered that for about an hour, then added two 28 ounce cans of crushed Italian tomatoes, covered it, and put it in an oven at 275 for most of the afternoon.

Most recipes call for shredding the meat with a fork after letting it cool. My sauce was thick enough that I just went after it with a potato masher.

I wound up using the sauce in a rich lasagna, but it tastes great over plain pasta, too. It freezes well, which makes future meals almost as convenient as its jarred namesake.

Beer World - Good News and Bad News from Waldo Pizza

Waldo Pizza makes one of the best pies in the city, and I would go there if their best beer was Diet Coke. What makes the place incredible, though, is their beer selection. From the beginning, they have always had an intelligent and varied beer list, light-years ahead of most restaurants.

First, the good news - they are now offering beer flights. For the ridiculously low price of $5, you can get 4 pours of 5 ounces each from their taps. When you consider that their taps include treasures like the fabled Bell's Hopslam, Schlafly's Barrel Aged Imperial Stout, Goose Island's Bourbon County Stout and Unibroue's Trois Pistoles, that amounts to a tour of some of the world's most amazing beers for $5. That's an insanely wonderful bargain. The 5 ounce pours are enough to give you a legitimate taste of the beers, and you might still have room for a pint after tasting the 4. (I opted for a bottle of Founder's Double Trouble IPA, which compares nicely with Hopslam.)

Now, the bad news.

Elliott Beier, Waldo's Cicerone (think beer sommelier), my favorite beer adviser and all-around nice guy, is leaving our town for Chicago at the end of the month. He'll be at the restaurant till the end of the month - I recommend swinging by and bidding your farewell, and if you haven't met him yet, taking the time to ask his advice about the beers on his fabulous list.

(Those who may worry about Waldo sinking into beer mediocrity after his departure may rest assured that they had a great beer list before Elliott's arrival, and I expect they will continue the tradition. But Elliott's excellent taste will be missed, I am sure.)

Soup Dumplings

Imagine a fat, round, pale dumpling, glistening on a bamboo steamer amidst wilted greenery. You pick one up, bite it, and there is a meatball surrounded by lovely, salty broth. In one morsel, you have dough, meatballs, and soup. You've just had a soup dumpling.

My son introduced us to soup dumplings at a place called Joe's Shanghai on a narrow street in New York's Chinatown. They've become a key feature of any trip to New York now; I've never seen them anywhere else.

The trick to making them without having the broth melt out is gelatin. When chilled, the broth is gelatinized, only to become a rich, silky broth when gently steamed. That bit of ingenuity makes for a tricky-to-eat burst of oxymoronic exotic comfort food.

If you're ever in New York, visit Joe's Shanghai. Elsewhere, they may appear as "Xiao Long Bao", though their quality may vary.

My Dinner at Per Se

In writing, as in many other aspects of life, it is unwise to leapfrog over your own abilities, even when offered the opportunity to do so. The hotshot high school quarterback dreams of a shot at the NFL, but would be crushed and demoralized if thrust into the situation. The funniest guy at the office bombs at an open-mike comedy show. The NASCAR fan winds up in a ditch when the speedometer hits triple digits.

Here I go, doing the same thing. An amateur foodwriter visits Per Se, and gets the VIP treatment, and tries to write about it.

Per Se is one of the world's best restaurants. Those who decide such things have declared it to be the best restaurant in the United States (or anywhere in the Americas, for that matter), and the 6th best in the world. Personally, I've not been to any other the other top 100, so I can neither confirm nor deny that it deserves #6. I'll let the experts defend their own rankings to those of who you swear by the French Laundry in Yountville, California (#12), Momofuku Ssäm Bar in New York (#31) or even the obviously crappy #97, Bo Innovation in Hong Kong.

Suffice it to say, the restaurant is well-regarded. I wore a suit to dinner on vacation.

First, even before the decor, you are struck by the people. Help is everywhere, from the team of people who greet you at the door and take your coat to the servers walking quickly but without seeming rushed. The staff is urgent in a manner that does not quicken your pulse; they are urgently working to help you feel relaxed and comfortable. It's a nifty trick, and they pull it off.

Then, the view. A table next to the fireplace, with a view of Columbus Circle and a snowy Central Park. The space is elegant, but graceful instead of "fancy".

But we were there for the dining. First, a flinty champagne with gruyere puffs and salmon cornets. The puffs (gougeres, actually) were at a perfect temperature, with the gruyere just warm enough to be sensous and flavorful. The cornets (Salmon tartare and Red onion Creme Fraiche in a Savory Cornet) were like tasty little cones of salty tart flavor to wake your palate from the cozy slumber brought on by the gougeres.

Hold it.

I could continue on like this, but I won't. The reason is I haven't even hit the menu yet. These were "amuse bouche" - little extras that just happen. Not that the term "menu" means what you think it means here, anyhow. You don't really order at Per Se - you decide. And all you decide is whether you're going to be a vegetarian for the evening or if you will have the chef's menu. Either way, the chef is in control, not you. Which is okay, since either way, you're down for $275 dollars, and I know my personal imagination cannot conjure a meal worth that much money, so it's just as well an expert is there to do it for me.

(The $275 does not include the fabulous wines and one ethereal beer, by the way. And there were 4 of us. And we got the VIP treatment, which means that we got much more than the normal $275 meal. Incredible. My son underwrote the entire experience.)

Instead of going through each course, I'll mention a few of my favorite moments out of the five and a half hour feast. There were 18 courses listed on the menu they gave us at the end of the evening, but it didn't list a few of the various extras delivered.

"Surf and Turf" was a lobster mitten (just the most tender portion of the lobster's claw), served with Boudin Noir, a luscious pork blood sausage, and heightened with a vigorous shaving of black truffle at the table.

The black truffles came out again with the "Salad of Young Beets". I had not ever been a beet fan, but this was out of this world. But the highlight of the dish for me was the "pastrami", which was shaved and dehydrated crispy foie gras, enhanced with pastrami spices. I never thought I would eat crispy foie gras and black truffles in one bite.

There were four items with foie gras. Three had black truffles. Can you believe that?

One of the most spectacular presentations was "Quail in a Jar". While I haven't seen the recipe, my son tells me that the first direction is "Debone a quail" - a ridiculous assignment for your average home cook! Anyhow, they brought a canning jar to the table, with a quail suspended in aspic. The brought it back to the kitchen for plating, and it returned as an amazingly rich quail stuffed with foie gras, and garnished with tiny lettuces and 100 year-old balsamic vinegar.

There were 6 salts at our table, ranging from a volcanic black salt to a pink salt from France.

Probably my favorite dish was the "Salvatore Brooklyn Ricotta 'Agnolotti'", which was like tiny ravioli filled with ricotta unlike any I have tasted before, and the whole dish was covered with white truffle shaved over it tableside. I've never seen white truffle before, much less tasted it, but it is pungent and earthy and mind-altering. The dish was heaven.

At one point during the meal, we were welcomed back into the kitchen. Everything sparkled, even a copper tube leading to a drain. There is no walk-in refrigerator; instead, refrigerators opened to reveal shelves of carefully organized ingredients in clearly-labeled tubs. The pace was urgent, but not frenetic. The person preparing desserts was a friendly young man from Barstow, here in Kansas City.

During the meal I learned that "Cervelle de Veau" is calf brain, and that I love calf brain. My daughter thought for a moment the server said it was "cat brain" . . .

I love food, but I never, ever, expected to have such a meal. I'm glad I did; it was the culinary equivalent of standing on Mount Everest. The fact that I have been there does not diminish my love of Pancho's or Blue Stem. But, man, it was amazing.

The meal happened two weeks ago tonight, and this is the first time I've wanted to write about it. I want to remember it, and I can't help but share the experience as best I can. I won't tell you to rush out and visit the place; the tab was more than several cars I've purchased in my lifetime.

Chef Thomas Keller, the founder of Per Se, wrote, "When you acknowledge, as you must, that there is no such thing as perfect food, only the idea of it, then the real purpose of striving toward perfection becomes clear: to make people happy, that is what cooking is all about." Lots of meals make me happy, but this one was special. Just like your happiest moment does not diminish the joy of other happy moments, my dinner at Per Se was a pinnacle of food appreciation, but it leaves room for plenty more.

Around the BLOCK Puts Food Review in Context

Not long ago, I stumbled upon Around the BLOCK, a nicely done local food blog. The author presents thoughtful reviews of well-chosen restaurants, and excels at providing vivid descriptions without lapsing into strident superlatives of praise or denunciation. Intelligence and grace abound.

In the temptingly positive review she posted yesterday about 1924 Main, one paragraph stands out as a must-read for those of us who believe that a thriving restaurant culture is an important and reliable sign of a city's vibrancy:

At 2 courses for $20 or 3 for $25 (all dishes are also offered a la carte), it’s hard to beat the price for an upscale, quality experience. All restaurants are struggling to survive in the sluggish economy, and owner Rob Dalzell has responded by making dinner more affordable without taking away the glamour of dining out. And, he is one of Kansas City’s independent restaurateurs, all of whom should be supported. If we don’t patronize these local treasures, they will not survive and we will be forced to spend our money in chain operations, which typically are less creative, more cookie-cutter, and don’t utilize local farmers. And what fun would that be?

Where will you spend your restaurant dollars in 2010?

Where Have All the Pretzels Gone?

We live in a golden age of beer, with hundreds of brands and varieties easily available at local stores at reasonable prices. No human population has ever, in the history of mankind, had a richer beer experience than American beer lovers today. It is a joyful time to be alive.

But where have all the pretzels gone?

What a painful irony it is that now that I am of age to match pretzels with their proper beverage, the honest pretzel is nearly extinct, preserved only in far-away gourmet sanctuaries beyond the reach of ordinary folk.

Today's pretzels are a shadow of what pretzels should be. Pretzels should be twisted, but now they are pooped preformed from machined tools and baked to bland uniformity. When I was a child, even the mass market brands were twisted, with little extra-browned pretzel nipples to be snapped off the top arch, and a corrugated center where strands of dough did a joyful dance of crispness. Now, mass-market pretzels are flat and uniform, tanned and smooth.


And the snap! Back in the day, when you bit a pretzel, it snapped like a dried branch. The place where it broke would be jagged with striations and spikes. Crumbs were flakes or like tiny twigs of dough. Now, pretzels are like compressed powder. The texture when you break one is like crumbling a clump of laundry detergent.

Don't get me wrong - I'll eat a bag of the current version of mass-market pretzels without a shred of self-control. Even a bad pretzel is, after all, a pretzel, and proof that crispy and salty are two keys to the good life.

But every now and then, I'll recall the pretzels of an earlier time. "Nibble with Gibble's" brand came in plastic bags and a twist-tie, and brightened winters in Schenectady, New York. When my mother passed away a couple years ago, the only item my wise brother sought from the home was a large round Tupperware container that she used to store pretzels in the cabinet when we were kids, but, alas, it was gone like Rosebud.

Snyder's sourdough pretzels are the closest you'll find in our grocery stores to the great pretzels of my childhood, though they are expensive and taste of cardboard. I've heard rumors that there are still great pretzels being made out there, and I may someday resort to mail ordering some. I've even tried baking my own, but they came out stone-hard, and looked more scatological than appetizing.

Even if I mail-order or bake my own, though, it won't be the same. Great pretzels are like a mother's love. You shouldn't need to seek it out, and scarcity reduces, rather than enhances, its value. They're both at their best when they are a comfortable part of everyday life. This holiday season, I miss them both.

Easy Great Bread at Home in 5 Minutes

I've written about my sourdough baking, and I got comments and emails about people's love of home-made fresh bread. But it's an hours-long process, requiring attentive measuring and careful timing, with uncertain results, particularly for newbie bakers. With Farm-to-Market's wonderful bread on supermarket shelves, and Fervere producing some of the best breads in the world, you can avoid the whole hassle for 4 or 5 bucks.

But you can make your whole house smell like baking bread for cents a loaf, and be rewarded with a truly top-notch bread, way up there with Farm-to-Market, without worry and without scheduling your day around it. I don't mean to sound like a street corner evangelist, or a side-show barker, but, seriously, I mean YOU, you should have fresh bread this week.

The secret is cold, wet dough. You spend a few minutes mixing together 3 cups of water, a table spoon and a half of yeast, two teaspoons of salt (more or less, depending on your taste), and six and a half cups of flour in a bowl with a spoon (no kneading), let it sit, covered loosely, for a couple hours, then put it in your refrigerator. Over the next couple weeks (if it lasts that long), you put flour on your hands, grab a grapefruit sized chunk of it, shape it into a sticky ball, let it rest for 40 minutes, and then bake it in a 450 degree oven for half an hour or so. Your hands are dirty for under 5 minutes, and you'll be pulling an awesome loaf of bread out of the oven in less time than it takes for 3 episodes of "Scrubs".

I meant to post a picture of one of the loaves I made this week, but it fell victim to breakfast toast.

If you want to learn more, and make the bread even better, this article is what turned me on to this miracle method, and it has a few tips that are absolutely worth it, like using a pizza stone and putting a pan of water in when you bake the bread. The authors of the article also have a blog and a couple books (Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking and Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day: 100 New Recipes Featuring Whole Grains, Fruits, Vegetables, and Gluten-Free Ingredients). I haven't even read the books yet - the Kansas City Public Library (yea, Waldo Branch!) is working on it for me - but I've been wildly impressed with the breads I've made over the past couple weeks.

The Time When Tips Die

The time that passes from when I finish my meal to when I receive my tab is the time that good tips die. It's a time when good waiters show their attentiveness and earn rewards, and bad waiters cost themselves money I would have been happy to give.

I'm a patient diner and a generous tipper. Where else in your economic life can an adjustment of a couple dollars either way have a direct impact on the happiness level of a hard-working person? On a $15 bill, I can be an ass for $2, a decent human being for $3, a good guy for $4 and a working class hero if I don't insist on getting a measly buck back from my $20. Most days, I'll invest in some good karma.

I don't blame waiters for mediocre food, I don't blame them for long preparation times, and I'm not fussy about whether my water glass is refilled every time I take a sip. I get annoyed with them for not having a clue about their beer list, but the problem is so widespread I assume there must be some union rule forbidding them from knowing what malted beverages are available, so I grudgingly forgive even that incompetence. Unless I see them hanging around chatting with coworkers, I assume they're working hard and doing their best.

But my patience lasts only until my plate is empty, or moved to the side. At that time, I expect the waiter to notice, ask whether I want dessert or another beverage, and begin preparing the tab. That is the time period that most impacts the size of my tip.

A couple weekends ago, we had pizza for Saturday lunch at an "upscale" pizzeria in Brookside. The food was better than I had been led to expect (including some inventive salads), and their beer list included Magic Hat #9, so the stage was set for a generous tip. But we became invisible to the waitress when the pizza was shoved to the side. With laser-like focus, she swooped in to seat take orders from tables near us, without even a sideways glance at the table she had already served.

To me, that is like serving a dessert with a roach in it after a fine meal. It ruins what has come before. A pleasant 35-40 minute lunch has been capped off with a 10 minute annoyance of trying to pay for it. Her tip reflected my annoyance, and she probably figured she had gotten stuck with a lousy tipper. 10 minutes earlier, she would have been pleasantly surprised.

Missing Meals - What Kansas City has Lost

Kansas City is a great restaurant town, and I think it's even getting better. We are blessed with more creative chefs than I can count, and they keep moving us forward. But, every now and then, my thoughts will trip back to restaurants that have disappeared, and I'd like to step back in time for a couple hours. Here are a few places I would visit, in no particular order:

1. Leonard's, for biscuits and gravy. Leonard's was a previous occupant of what is now Governor Stumpy's, and they put out the best biscuits and gravy I've ever had. The gravy was peppery, with lots of tasty sausage, and the biscuits were soft with a crisp crust.

2. La Mediterranee for lunch. On the east side of the Plaza, a quiet, elegant French restaurant used to serve top-notch fare on fine china with white tablecloths for around $5.

3. Al Roubaie's (sp?) for lobster. Up the hill on Main from the Plaza, back when Main went straight over the creek, was a spotty little restaurant with a great lobster special. If I recall correctly, you got lobster and sides for $15, and it was a feast.

4. Thirsty's Cantina for lunch. I don't know how they packed so much flavor into a simple chicken sandwich, but it was wonderful. There used to be a great bar in the space now occupied by Panerra in Westport. They also served a burrito thing I can't remember the name of (chicken cantina?), but it was filled with chicken in a creamy, cheesy sauce with just enough jalapeno to make it shine. All that, plus chips and salsa.

5. TJ Cinnamon's. I know that the name lives on as a corporate asset of the Arby's chain, but, if you weren't around to experience it, you have no idea how mouth-watering a walk through Ward Parkway mall could be back in the mid-80s. The aromas of butter and cinnamon wafted through the then-active halls of commerce. The rolls were warm and soft - the size of softballs - and they were individual treasures, not boxed products.
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This trip down memory lane has not truly been a lament. I think we have more, better restaurants today than we did 20 years ago. I wouldn't even trade the dependable neighborhood friendliness of Governor Stumpy's for the breakfast of Leonard's. Things change and they sometimes get better. But these are some fond food memories I have of Kansas City . . .

Where is the Best Mole in Kansas City?

I've never made a great, or even a very good, mole. In fact, I'm not sure I've even really tasted a great mole. I feel like a whole world of culinary awesomeness awaits.

Mole is a broad word that includes thick Mexican sauce. Guacamole is a form of mole, though that's not what I'm talking about when I express my desire to taste a great mole. I want rich, peppery, complex sauce that steals the show from the sweetest pork, the juiciest chicken, the freshest fish, or whatever is served with it.

I know that I'm still not being specific enough. There are moles that range from green to nearly black, and flavors that range from fire to peanutty. I've read Rick Bayless' cookbooks and even spent a day trying to make an ambitious green mole from one of them, but it was merely okay.

Where in Kansas City can I find good versions of this labor-intensive sauce? Are the jarred varieties any good? Any advice for an open-minded, eager-to-learn gringo?

Pasta Carbonara in Minutes - and the Fiction of Recipes

For most dishes, recipes are an inspiration, not a road map. There's no point in stressing over exact measurements for most recipes - differences in technique and ingredients are going to make your dish an individual creation anyhow. Relax, be yourself, and make it the way you like it.

Pasta carbonara is a great example of this approach. In essence, it's bacon and eggs with pasta - breakfast bolstered for dinner. Calvin Trillin argues that it ought to replace turkey for Thanksgiving dinner, though I don't go quite that far. Turkey deserves its place as a once-a-year struggle, while pasta carbonara ought to be in the regular rotation of weeknight dinners.

Here's how I made it last night. I am completely capable of writing this in the traditional format of recipes, with a list of ingredients followed by cooking instructions, but I'd prefer to break out of that mold. This is not a scientific formula to be slavishly recreated. I started a pound of pasta boiling, and fried up a third of a pound of pancetta, adding a a few cloves of minced garlic when it was almost crisp. When the garlic was softened and the pasta cooked to my liking, I tossed the drained pasta in with the pancetta along with a little bit of the pasta water, removed it from the heat, tossed in 4 eggs I had whipped with salt and pepper, stirred that vigorously together, and then stirred in about a cup of parmesan and some parsley.

That's all, folks. In the time it would have taken to heat up two microwave dinners, I made enough pasta carbonara to make dinner and a couple hearty lunches.

At almost every point in that brief recipe, though, there was room to add your own preferences. I used pancetta this time, but bacon works great, and so does prosciutto. Go with your preference. I used a pretty heavy hand with the garlic - use as much or as little as you like, and add it early if you want its flavor to mellow and meld, or add it late if you want it to be sharp. Use as much or as little pasta water as you like to get the consistency you prefer, or toss in a little white wine to give it a touch of acid. Use as many eggs as you see fit, and substitute different cheeses for the parmesan - or simply use a different grade of parmesan. (I was lazy last night, and used the parmesan that had been grated at the store - I could have easily upgraded by buying a chunk of real parmesan and firing up the food processor.) If you want, you can add capers or olives, and you can toss in herbs.

Even if I had set out to accurately recreate someone else's recipe, it's doubtful that I could recreate exactly what the recipe writer makes. How crisp is crisp pancetta? What brand of pancetta are we each using? They're not all the same. Even the pasta and eggs have subtle differences and vary in freshness - not to even mention the possibility of home-made pasta. The cheese is a wild card - even IF we both chose parmesan, it's unlikely that they're going to taste very much the same.

Most recipes are springboards to get you started creating. Don't fear the recipe police. Go with your preferences.

Osceola Cheese - Disappointment on Highway 13

When traveling through Missouri, there are lots of fascinating spots to visit for a quick break. Those brown Missouri Department of Conservation signs point to dozens of small parks, and the flea markets and antique shops hold treasures.

But the Osceola Cheese Shop is not one of them.

Always crowded with slow-moving sample-takers, the store is harshly lit, poorly laid out and filled with cheese that mostly tastes like American with artificial flavorings. On top of that, you get "gifts" offered by an attached Christian bookstore and Precious Moments figurines next to dew rags festooned with the flag of the Confederate Losers.

It manages the difficult feat of being completely tacky without even offering visitors an opportunity to be ironically amused by kitsch. It's a cheese shop that can't even be engagingly cheesy.

Italian Meatballs

I love meatballs. I've had fancy, lowbrow, Swedish, baseball-sized, Himalayan, frozen, crockpotted, sandwiched, fried, marble-sized and other varieties I can't even remember. If there's a meatball on a menu, I'm a sucker for it.

So, yesterday when I decided to add a carnivorous twist to my vegetarian spaghetti sauce, meatballs were the obvious choice. But not just rolled up pieces of ground beef - I wanted something that would stand up to the long-simmered tomato sauce.

2 pounds of lean ground beef, a half pound of ground pork, a little less than a half pound each of pancetta and prosciutto cut into tiny pieces, 3 eggs, some bread crumbs, some red wine, spices and Italian parsley, tossed in a bowl and mixed. I browned them in olive oil, then put them in a dutch oven for an hour at 350, covered in the spaghetti sauce. The recipe makes too darned many meatballs - a crowd of 10 barely put a dent in them.

Few things are better than meatballs on an autumn afternoon, but two things that come close are the aroma of spaghetti sauce and meatballs filling the house, and leftovers.

Not A Restaurant Review - Mezzaluna on Gregory

I had lunch at the freshly opened Mezzaluna now occupying the former Papa Keno's space at Gregory and Rockhill (formerly Waldeaux Wines and Liquors, and Circle K when we moved into the neighborhood 20+ years ago). Before I get started describing the experience, I want to make a quick acknowledgment that I am not a real restaurant reviewer. I fear that sometimes we bloggers get a little full of ourselves, and think we're the equivalent of a legitimate restaurant reviewer, because we go to restaurants and write about our experiences.

That's kind of like claiming you're a football player after tossing the ball around on the lawn, or claiming you're a golfer after a round at Cool Crest. Just because you go through some of the motions doesn't mean you've played the whole game. Tiger Woods does more than putt on felt, and there are a lot of Xs and Os in a real football game.

Real reviewers know a lot more than I do, and work a lot harder. I'm about to spout off on a restaurant I have visited once, by myself, for lunch, during their "soft" opening. I have no experience in opening a restaurant, and I don't have any advanced culinary training. I haven't written a ton of reviews, and I haven't studied the work of the great restaurant reviewers.

A proper restaurant reviewer would approach his or her task with a wealth of experience in the restaurant and journalism businesses, and would visit several times with multiple friends to get a sense of the breadth of the menu and the skill of the service. It's easy to laud or lambast a restaurant for one meal, but it's not a fair assessment, nor is it particularly helpful to the reader. Your praise of a lamb chop doesn't give a vegetarian much of a guess about what to expect.

I write all this not to belittle those of us who happen to publish on a blog - there are some top-notch true restaurant reviewers on blogs who have the skills and put in the effort to do first-rate reviews. I write all this simply to pay proper homage to those who work while I play, and to heighten the readers' awareness of the rigor required of real restaurant reviewers.

Now that all that is out of the way, I'm happy to be welcoming Mezzaluna to the neighborhood. It's a small Italian restaurant with a menu full of the basics, a good wine list and a nicely-done beer list, enhanced by a few craft brews on tap. The downstairs space is nice but a little utilitarian, with floor-to-ceiling retail coolers covering one entire wall, left over from the space's days as a liquor store. The upstairs space is surprisingly elegant, though, with cloth-covered chairs, white tablecloths and a pleasant breeze when the garage-door walls are opened. The guys at the table next to me ordered a bottle of wine (well-served by the waiter who swore it was the first time he had ever, in his life, opened a bottle of wine), and I envied the prospect of staying there for the afternoon, sipping wine with friends at tree-level.

The menu included several tempting options, all within the $8-12 range, including all the classics like ravioli, chicken parmesan, caesar salads, etc. I sought and accepted the waiter's advice in choosing between the Pizza Mezzaluna (a carnivore's concoction with garlic) and the lasagna. He recommended the lasagna, and it was a generous serving of well-prepared meat, cheese and pasta. It stood out for its restraint - some lasagna beats you over the head with dark red marinara sauce and spicy sausage, but this one was more elegant. The meat featured ground veal and a delicate hand with the spices, and the sauce was tamed with cream. I'd recommend it highly.

I visited the restaurant on its third day, and there were the expected kinks in service. The credit card machine was not working, and the waiter was stretched too thin serving both upstairs and downstairs. Given his apparent lack of experience (never having opened a bottle of wine), he did a fantastic job, with a friendly, relaxed style while running up and down the stairs.

I look forward to returning sometime soon for dinner, and sharing wine with friends in the upstairs space. Mezzaluna should thrive as an elegant addition to the neighborhood.

Pasta with Chicken and Olives - Simple Sophistication, Quick and Easy

Elaborate recipes are great fun, but some days I just want something quick and easy. Those are the days for Pasta with Chicken and Olives. Thanks to the development of olive bars and rotisserie chicken in grocery stores, I can have this on the table in thirty minutes or less.

The olive cart at my local grocer is small but wonderful. For this recipe, I have a bias toward green olives - they tend to be a bit firmer, and their flavor goes well with chicken. But the key is to pick out a blend. I pick out a mix of 2 cups or so of olives, black and green, mostly pitted, along with a few bright red Peppadew peppers (read their odd story here)
and some caper berries. (If you've never used caper berries, just cut off their stem and prepare yourself for a briny, grainy treat.)

Don't use the slotted spoons when scooping out your olives. That juice is key to infusing the dish with flavor. I usually wind up with juice covering about half the olives.

When you get home, start a pot of water boiling for the pasta (use your favorite variety, though I prefer good old fettucini). Take about half of the meat off the chicken, in bite-sized chunks. Set it aside, and chop the olives, peppers and capers into smaller pieces. No mincing, just breaking them up a little. Dump them with the juice into a pan big enough to hold the pasta when it's ready, and heat them up.

Then go to your refrigerator and see what enhancements you want to toss in. A little Siracha sauce is great. Pepperoncini add a spicy bite. A little garlic flavor from a splash of bottled Garozzo's Amogio sauce is great. A squeeze of lemon or a little white wine works, too.

Once the pasta is cooked just a bit shy of al dente, drain it and toss it in with the olives. Add the chicken meat and cook it for 5 or so minutes so that some of the juice flavor gets into the pasta, and the dish is heated through. Mix it all up and serve it.

If you have a loaf or crusty bread or a salad, all the better, but the meal is satisfying as is. It's a lot cheaper than getting a pizza delivered, and it's even better for lunch the following day.

Free Yeast for Baking

Few things on earth are as satisfying as a loaf of home-made bread of sourdough. First, the aroma spreads through the house, and then you get to saw through a rich dark crust and taste that still-warm bread. It has a tang that elevates it over blander loaves, and it's all yours for a bit of patience and less money than the cheapest supermarket fluff.

Sourdough yeast is wild yeast - not from a packet or a jar, but from the air and surfaces surrounding us. Yeast is everywhere, hoping to find the right opportunity to start converting sugars and starches into carbon dioxide and alcohol. If you give yeast that opportunity and capture its carbon dioxide in a glue of flour and fluid, you have bread dough.

Thousands of varieties of yeast exist around us. Over time, civilization has cultured the "best" varieties, and these are the ones you find in foil packets in the grocery store. They are wonderful at what they do - produce consistent loaves with dependable rise and a neutral flavor. Now, they even have rapid-rise versions that do all those things in about half the time the prior generations had to invest in their bread.

Sourdough yeast is different. It has a tangy, distinctive, sour taste. It rises on a slower schedule, and can be finicky about whether it will rise at all. Sourdough yeast is typically kept in starters, some of which have been passed down for generations and originally gained fame when gold prospectors left their civilized yeast behind and started fresh cultures of wild yeast in the Wild West (you can get a free starter of a Carl Griffin's Oregon Trail strain from 1847 here, for the cost of a self-addressed stamped envelope).

It's easy to make your own starter, though. Saturday morning, I mixed a cup of flour and a cup of water, and put it in a loosely covered jar and let it sit. By Saturday evening, a layer of yellow-brownish fluid had formed on the surface, and I mixed it back in. Sunday morning, it looked kind of foamy. This morning, it had risen up the jar and fallen back down, and is ready to be "fed" with more water and flour.

The yellowish stripe in the second picture is "hooch" - a layer of fluid with alcohol in it, but nothing you would want to drink. You can either mix it back in or wait for it to rise to the surface and pour it off.

I have captured the wild yeast, and, as baking season returns, I'll be able to create my own unique versions of sourdough loaves, biscuits and even waffles.

Springfield Cashew Chicken

Batter-dipped, deep-fried chunks of chicken, topped with a sauce based on oyster sauce, served over rice with a sprinkling of crisp cashews and a garnish of green onions - that's what I'm talking about. One of Missouri's great contributions to the culinary world, Cashew Chicken is a soul-satisfying melding of Chinese tradition with the Midwestern insistence that everything is better when it's battered and fried.

Springfield residents are justifiably proud of the dish, which must be ordered as "Springfield Cashew Chicken" outside of the area, lest one be served a batter-deprived stir-fried version with vegetables serving as a major component, rather than a garnish. Some residents of the city will claim that Springfield has the most Chinese restaurants per capita of any city in the United States - an unverified, unsourced and unlikely assertion if ever there was one, but it's nice to see Southern Missourians taking pride in something that doesn't involve large tires, guns, or strange interpretations of the Bible, so let's let that one slide, okay?

The important thing is that the dish is really good. Well-prepared, the sauce is a tiny bit sweet and a little more salty, the chicken pieces are crisp and light, the green onions add just enough bite, and the cashews add elements of crispness and richness. It's not pretentious in the slightest - this is food aimed to please, not impress.

According to most histories, the dish was invented by a man named David Leong, whose first restaurant was welcomed to the neighborhood with ten sticks of dynamite. (Asian-Americans weren't appreciated in southern Missouri in 1963, even if they had stormed the beach at Omaha.) No wonder he chose to please the local palate rather than challenge it.

On my recent vacation in Colorado, Ancillary Adams and his wonderful "lady friend" prepared a home-made version of the dish, and it may have been the best meal served in Breckenridge that evening.

Are there any good versions of this regional treat served at restaurants here in Kansas City?

Hamburger Helper

I want your advice.

What kind of burger should be the special at Blanc Burgers + Bottles? In the relatively near future, I get to meet with Chef Josh Eans to design a new burger which will then be put on special for the weekend.

The pressure is on to come up with something amazing. After all, the Inside Out Burger (bleu cheese stuffed burger, applewood smoked bacon, onion ring, home-made catsup, mustard, butter lettuce on an onion brioche bun) is thought by many to be the best burger in the world. My personal favorite is the Au Poivre (pepper-crusted burger, creamy green peppercorn sauce, grilled onions, watercress, salt and pepper brioche bun).

If my name is going to be attached to something that I want people to choose over those two platters of heaven, I need to come up with something world-changing.

Right now, I'm thinking maybe a variation on the Aspen Burger, a regional favorite from upstate New York featuring sour cream and sauteed mushrooms. Perhaps if we jazzed it up a little by using creme fraiche and some gourmet mushrooms, we could bring a bit of Schenectady to Kansas City.

Or we could go to the opposite corner of the United States for some inspiration. How about a green chile and sharp cheddar burger? Maybe serve it with some sort of mole sauce?

I LOVE Blanc Burgers + Bottles. The first time I went there, I returned 5 times over the next two weeks. Their Au Poivre burger may be tied for "Best Sandwich in Kansas City" with "#1 (spicy)" ordered at the counter from Bella Napoli.

I need to bring my "A game" to this assignment. Any advice?

Princess Garden: BEST Chinese Restaurant in Kansas City

The presumption encompassed in that title is staggering. Here I am, a middle-aged guy who's lived most of his life in Kansas City, has never set foot in Asia, much less China, and never studied Chinese cuisine.

The absurdity is heightened by the very title I want to award. Best Chinese Restaurant?? Is there a best American restaurant? Is it a cajun seafood steakhouse with Philly cheese-steaks and funnel cakes? We can't even agree on a best Kansas City-style barbecue restaurant, but I'm blithely going to choose one restaurant to represent the cuisine of a billion-plus people in 8 Great Traditions?

You betcha! The significance of a writer's proclamations lies in the eyes of the beholder. It's not whether you agree or disagree with me - it's whether you read it and give it a second thought.

All that philosophizing aside, the indisputable winner (even though I've only visited probably a dozen or so of the options here in KC) is Princess Garden on Wornall.

Princess Garden is a classic of the genre. Carved Chinese marble lions greet you from the parking lot at 8906 Wornall, and the decor of red and gold looks exactly like a typical restaurant in Beijing, Shanghai or Xi'an - at least to me it does. The carpet, the paintings, even the darkened, empty bar off to the right of the pay stand all scream real China, at least as imagined by Kansas Citians.


The drink menu is a hoot. Fresh from the early 70s, it features My Tais, Fog Cutters and a wide range of elaborate concoctions, with a page titled "Strong, for those who enjoy drinking." The alcoholic fantasyland is heightened by descriptions like "Shark's Tooth - the bite of this drink is so sharp and quick that you won't feel a thing" and "Princess Garden Express - You will feel the hit by this extraordinary drink - try it and experience yourself." Alas, I'm a beer drinker, so I haven't experienced myself yet.

But the food is the attraction, and the food is great. In our most recent trip (when the kids were in town - this is a nostalgic favorite for them, even though Sam gets to eat in NYC's Chinatown), we had the crab rangoon and the steamed dumplings. Both are exactly what you would expect from a good Chinese restaurant - nothing super fancy, nothing to elevate the genre to a whole new level with challenging and intriguing tastes and textures - simply solid, competent examples of what you would expect.

As always, we got the Crunchy Beef as an entree. I haven't seen this on other menus, but it is pieces of beef the size of shoe-string potatoes, fried to a crispy exterior and served with mu shu pancakes in a sticky sauce. Rich, decadent and wonderful.

We also had a dish with an impossibly long title, including words such as "sizzling", "yellow noodles" and "double faced" - it was spectacular. The noodles are both tender and crispy, depending on how soaked they are in the light sauce, and covered with chicken, shrimp and vegetables.

As I hope I made clear in the first paragraphs, I have no business offering superlatives about Chinese restaurants. And I can say with legitimacy and integrity is that Princess Garden is a family favorite, with food that satisfies and always meets or exceeds our midwestern expectations. The staff is friendly, and the service is good. I don't know if it is authentic or not. I just know that our family has had many, many happy meals there, and I recommend it to anyone who is wants food that is as far from chic as it is from Beijing.