“Thank you for caring about animal husbandry that doesn’t suck” –Matt Caputo
I recently had a pottersville moment with regards to Salt Lake City’s food environment. It happened while attending a media event at Caputo’s where they were introducing their new butcher shop.
What if Tony Caputo, the food purveyor, never existed? What if he and his businesses had fizzled out like the majority of other restaurants and grocers? Salt Lake may have ended up like…
It’s difficult to find sustainable farmers and ranchers in Utah. If you do your research, you’ll notice that we’re about 10 years behind the Northern California or Oregon area as far as organic farming, free-range poultry, grass-fed beef, and pastured pork. I can count on one hand the number of people doing 100% grass-fed beef in Utah. I know because we bought a quarter beef last year. Even the hobby-ranchers buy a couple steers, raise them on grass for a little while and then send them to a feedlot to “fatten them up” on corn. They don’t know any different. Corn is so engrained into our American culture that even the old-timers that I’ve talked with think that it’s normal to feed a steer corn.
So when my sister saw McDowell Family Farms on a KSL news spot, she told me about them and I decided to see if they were everything they claimed to be, because many people are not.
Ah, the noble pig. It’s by far the most interesting animal…to eat. Even if it’s not your favorite, you can’t help but marvel at the enormous number of variations there are, especially for an animal that weighs in at roughly one-fourth the size of a steer.
Some of the best people, if not the best in Utah, to educate people on the wonders of pork, especially cured pork, are the folks at Caputo’s. A few weeks ago, they held a combined tasting class that focused on Olli Salumeria and Epic beers.
Paninis remind me of Europe. They seemed to be everywhere. All the sandwich stands offer some sort of grilled sandwich. They were perfect for people on the go. Smashed together, thin, and usually contained in a small, narrow bag. I ate quite a few of them.
Upon returning, I wanted to figure how to make good paninis at home. After much trial and error, we’ve figured out a few different things that make for better sandwiches.
Tips for a good panini:
I always love it when food is half price. So when we heard about the Yelp! Eats event happening in Salt Lake we were pretty excited. And the list of participating restaurants was almost all new to me. We really only had time for one restaurant so we ended up choosing Faustina because I’d heard good things.
Despite the heat, we decided to sit on the patio. It was shaded, somewhat secluded (until we noticed the apartment building next to us who could look down over the entire dining area) plenty of greenery, and we caught a glimpse of a rainbow about halfway through our meal.
I was toying with the idea of not doing a write-up about this wonderful night that Kim and I had recently. We were invited to a “Vintage Mixer” by the gracious, Becky Rosenthal of The Vintage Mixer. Several other bloggers and food writers were present and we met some wonderful people. A couple of them have already written about their experience. However, in hopes of offering a new perspective, or perhaps simply for my own enjoyment, here I go:
Jam and I have had a love-hate relationship for the past several years. Ever since I discovered that corn is evil and that too much sugar is bad for me (I know, it was a revelation) it’s been harder and harder to justify PBNJ. Check your fridge, it’s likely that your jam (or nigh-unspreadable, gelatinous cousin, jelly) is made of corn or at least has a tablespoon of actual sugar in a tablespoon of jam. That last sentence wasn’t a typo. I just measured it. I took a jar of Bonne Mamam raspberry jam from my fridge and checked the nutrition facts: 13g of sugar per tablespoon of jam. Then I got out the scale and weighed 13 grams of white granulated sugar. Then I poured that into a measuring spoon. Almost exactly one tablespoon.
After falling in love with Thai food, particularly the stuff that comes out of Wan’s kitchen at Aroy-D in Ogden, I petitioned her for a chance to observe her cooking and to see how it’s all done.
After spending about 2 hours in the kitchen, watching the preparation of a couple favorites, and discovering a few new ones, I came away loving it even more.
When I first heard the term sous-vide, I heard the French meaning: under vacuum. After coming to understand the actual cooking method that it is, I became intrigued, especially since I kept hearing this term, sous-vide this, sous-vide that, around the high-end restaurant circles. It seemed to be a trend. It also seemed to be something generally unattainable for the home cook. A sous-vide machine, a good one, can cost upwards of $800. Most of these myths and misconceptions of mine were dispelled last night.
This chocolate cookie recipe is from America’s Test Kitchen. Like so many of their recipes, unfortunately, it’s been reprinted a few times. I’m finding it in the issue “Best Recipes and Reviews 2010.” Thankfully, I’ve tried it and I love it. It’s one of the best cookie recipes for several different reasons:
1. The technique of leaving the chocolate chunks large equals perfectly melted pockets of lovely chocolate throughout the cookie.
2. They cook perfectly right out of the freezer.
3. They eat perfectly right out of the freezer.
4. The texture is wonderful and flavor is hard to beat.