Posts by author: Casey

After he wowed us with his lamb bacon, Danielle and I knew we had to hit up Chef Bobby Hellen of the Belgian gastropub Resto for a Good. Food. Stories. Q&A. Bobby, a native New Yorker, has been with the Resto team since the restaurant’s 2007 opening, and now leads the kitchen as Executive Chef.

Though the restaurant is most well-known (along with the vast selection of Belgian brews) for its pork-focused dishes and nose-to-tail eating, Bobby also serves up heaping amounts of locally-sourced produce alongside his housemade charcuterie, meats, and poultry from New York-area farms like Four Story Hill. For the more adventurous, the Resto team offers the Large Format Feast, where a whole animal will be broken down and delectably prepared for your large group (they’ll feed up to 18 people).

>> Read on to find out how a grapefruit changed Bobby’s life. >>

Two years into my residency as a New York Eater, I officially declared a boycott on Restaurant Week and most prix fixe menus. I was tired of being served one too many subpar options, too many basic dishes that weren’t showing off the true talents of the restaurant I was sitting in. Why was I shelling out $35 for a dumbed-down piece of seared salmon when I could be ordering a more satisfying app and entree for the same price off the real menu? I didn’t see the deal.

So it was an unexpected (but happy) blow to my jaded snobbery to discover the most compelling reason to have lunch at A Voce—apart from the phenomenal fresh housemade pastas—is that they don’t play around with their prix fixe menu.

For the past year or so, the restaurant has instituted a daily $29 three-course lunch special, an actual well-thought-out menu rather than the cheap-to-serve stuff like a boring green salad and a chicken entree. Chef Missy Robbins changes it up every so often, highlighting different regions of Italy depending on the area’s iconic cuisine and the time of year she’s serving it—hearty dishes from the Piedmont in the winter, lighter seafood-based fare from Sardinia or the Veneto in warmer weather.
>> Read on to discover the menu standouts at A Voce. >>

I’m getting more into cooking, thanks to your site, and I’m noticing a lot of recipes that call for unsalted butter. Why should I be using this instead of salted, which I usually buy?

I’m glad you’re inspired to take on new challenges, and that you’re paying attention to recipes. Salted butter exists for the same reason that other mouthwatering ingredients like ham, beef jerky, gravlax, and cheese do—salting is a time-tested method of culinary preservation.

These days, with omnipresent refrigeration, there’s less of a need to worry about whether you, Ma, and Pa will have enough dairy products to make it through the winter on the prairie. However, because modern salted butter will still keep longer than its unsalted counterpart, even the generic unsalted butter at the grocery store will be fresher than the salted version.
>> But there’s another important reason to choose unsalted butter when cooking. Read on. >>

It’s almost masochistic, as I sit here under layers of blankets inside a house surrounded by walls of snow, to remember this drink’s origins on a meltingly hot August afternoon in Manhattan. Plodding up Hudson St. in the Village, looking for a beverage in the shade, Dan and I stopped into the recently-opened Employees Only.

There we discovered the West Side, a lemon-and-mint cocktail that was born for sipping on outdoor terraces on an 80-degree day. After that revelatory moment, and because we have the idyllic shaded backyard that Employees Only lacks, we appropriated the recipe as our home’s signature summertime drink.

But all good things must end—or at least cycle out of season. Last year, when winter took my mint and turned it into a brown, brittle husk, I was forced to revise that feeling of summer-in-a-glass and make it a little more appropriate for the indoor imbibers.

Enter tarragon, an herb that features a variety specifically known as Mexican marigold or winter tarragon because of its ability to withstand harsher temperatures while keeping the same anise spiciness that we know and love. (Sadly, my tarragon didn’t make it to February this year, so the illustrated herbs are the usual variety of French tarragon, brought to you by the grocery store.)

And the sweet fragrance of Meyer lemons, which just happen to be in season during the darkest months of the year, replace the traditional summery brightness of regular Eureka lemons. (Ah, winter citrus. Without you, I’d be lost in January and February—or at least be afflicted with scurvy.)

My recipe calls for Zubrowka vodka, which frankly was first purchased because it had a bison on the label, and as a Bucknell graduate, I couldn’t resist. Those of you with similarly wonky college mascots understand.

But the vodka is actually distinctive and tasty, flavored with Polish bison grass (!) that adds warm cinnamon notes to the winter version of the drink. If you don’t have bison-grass vodka in your liquor cabinet, feel free to substitute citrus vodka.

For those of you feeling flush, add a float of Prosecco on top of the drink. Or just splash in the seltzer as usual, and you’ll be none the less pleased.

The Wintergarden West Side
Makes two drinks

• 3 oz Zubrowka vodka
• A small bunch of tasty tarragon leaves
• 3 oz Meyer lemon juice
• 1 1/2 oz simple syrup
• Prosecco or citrus-flavored seltzer

Muddle the vodka and tarragon leaves in a shaker. Add ice cubes, lemon juice, and simple syrup, and shake for at least 30 seconds. Pour into two coupes or martini glasses and top off with Prosecco/seltzer to taste.

Nothing beats homemade, but have you ever come across a chicken broth for cooking that does not taste horribly artificial (and does not contain MSG, yeast etc labelled as “spices”)?

You’re absolutely right—you’re never going to get the same poultry-infused goodness from a can or a box as you do from making your own broth, and it’s truly hard to make a case for store-bought versions. I taste-tested a number of off-the-shelf options as research for your questions, and the depressing answer is that I can’t wholeheartedly recommend a single prepared broth that tastes amazing. There are, however, two brands that I keep in my pantry for quick fixes.

Out of all the readily-available boxed broths, I give my seal of approval to the Whole Foods 365 house brand, which lists “organic chicken concentrate” as the second ingredient and “organic spices” at the tail end, but trends closer than the rest to an authentic broth flavor. It’s also cheaper than my other preferred option, Kitchen Basics Chicken Stock, which also lists “chicken flavor” as the second ingredient but notes all the specific spices involved.

Both of these impart a clean taste without some of the lingering oniony overtones, sodium overload, or even worse, absolute lack of flavor in the boxes and cans cluttering the local supermarket aisles.

You’ll never catch me using them as a base for chicken soup—that’s the time to buy the whole chicken and throw it in the stockpot—but I’ll use them in place of water for cooking rice and grains, add some in place of the full amount of cream to my mashed potatoes and sauces, or quickly deglaze a pan if I don’t have any wine open.

A few words about the additives you mentioned: As I noted in an earlier post on umami, glutamates/glutamic acid are found in all proteins, and are what give salty foods their deeply savory flavor. Manufacturers will often add these in various processed forms to boost your impression of their product as “rich” and as such, it’s hard to find an option that has a naturally brothy taste without going overboard.

Autolyzed yeast extract and hydrolyzed soy protein, both of which are in the vegetarian option Better than Bouillon, are types of processed glutamic acid to help it mimic the mouthfeel and flavor of an animal protein-based broth. And as glutamic acid is the main component in MSG, it’s something to be aware of if you have sensitivity. Livestrong (surprisingly) has a clear, easy-to-understand breakdown of the process used to autolyze yeast and the ongoing controversy between naturally-occurring glutamates versus processed glutamates.

Ask Casey taste-tests it all so you don’t have to. Got any more cooking conundrums or dining-out issues? Bring it on at caseyATgoodfoodstoriesDOTcom.