Chef on the Go

The last couple of weeks have kept me moving!  It began with my participation in a dinner fundraiser for the High Museum in Atlanta.  Gerry Klaskala, chef at Aria, organized a group of buddies -- Hugh Acheson from Five & Ten in Athens, GA, John Currence from City Grocery in Oxford, MS, and me -- to each do a course in his friend's ultra-modern home facing the Chattahoochee River.

John prepared a West African sweet potato and cashew soup with fried chicken livers, Hugh offered hamachii with yuzu, and Gerry had a duo of beef (Kobe short rib and center cut ribeye) with foie gras and truffle. I prepared some creamy grits and squab crepinette with swiss chard and pork belly. Kathryn King of Aria served Georgia strawberries with angel cake and strawberry sorbet. The owners of Pride Mountain poured their full-flavored Napa wines. 

Driving back to Birmingham the next morning, I was planning for my friend, the farmer Bill Kazokas, to spend the weekend consulting on our newly acquired farm, Paradise Farms. Pardis and I hope to develop it into an organic vegetable and fruit garden for our restaurants. Bill is one of the leaders in organic, sustainable farming in America and travels around the world to help implement productive farm operations. We will probably take this year to properly test and improve the soil with compost, install an irrigation system, and work on a 5-year plan for crop rotation. The John Deere is ready and our chickens are laying, and we hope to have interested staff from all the restaurants come and give us a hand and be a part of this ambitious new project.

The next day our old friend Dick Ward from Saintsbury winery in Carneros, CA, visited for a wine-maker dinner at Highlands. His wise and humorous comments made me reflect on why we have always been so honored to know him -- and to drink his incredibly good wines. Here is the dinner menu from that evening:

Saintsbury Vin Gris 2006 -- hors d'oeuvres

Tapenade stuffed Paradise Farm eggs, celery with pimento and cheese, shad roe, and capers

Bayou LaBatre shrimp with kumquat and crab relish

Saintsbury Chardonnay Carneros 2005

Saintsbury Chardonnay Brown Ranch 2004

Roast quail filled with Benton's country ham and dirty rice with Muddy Pond sorghum gastrique

Saintsbury Pinot Noir Carneros 2005

Saintsbury Pinot Noir Carneros 1995

Niman Ranch pork belly and shoulder with fava beans and Coosa Valley grits

Saintsbury Pinot Noir Brown Ranch 2005

Saintsbury Pinot Noir Cerise Vineyard Anderson Valley 2005

Almond financier with bananas and buttermilk ice cream

The 1995 Carneros pinot noir was a revelation as to how age-worthy these Saintsbury wines are -- it had evolved into a stunningly delicious and elegant wine. The single vineyard wines will undoubtedly age in a similar fashion.

The very next morning Pardis and I headed to New York for a cooking demo on the Martha Stewart show. Her brilliant staff helped me overcome my jitters, and I hope Martha was pleased with the "pork on pork" dish we prepared from the Southern Table cookbook.  We simmered the pork in Maker's Mark bourbon and served a spring vegetable ragoût with lots of aromatic fresh mint. We followed that up with an hour-long radio interview on EATDRINK with Lucinda Scala Quinn. I absolutely enjoyed conversing with her.

We finished our New York adventure with rosé at Pastis with our editor, Ann Bramson, and a tour of her beloved neighborhood of the West Village. We made stops at the Waverly Inn, Morandi, and then met our former chef de cuisine, James Briscione, for a Tocai at Del Posto and a very fun dinner at Red Cat. We managed to get in a dinner at Le Cirque and a "beautiful people" lunch at Cipriani Downtown, but it was time to get back to the kitchen in Birmingham.

Check out the April issue of Town & Country, which features Dorothy Kalin and Christopher Hirsheimer's "green" article on chefs working with local organic farmers. The article is great and portrays our dear friends at Coosa Valley Mill, Luke and Frank McEwen, with their free-ranging chicken eggs and Snow's Bend spring vegetables. 

A brand new magazine has launched its inaugural issue in April -- Garden & Gun. The somewhat oddly named magazine is gorgeous, similar to a southern version of Town & Country. The great Southern food writer, chef, and restaurateur Bill Neal's wife Moreton wrote the most gracious article about our food and restaurants -- thanks Moreton and Dorothy.