March 30th, 2009 by Trevett

The Week Ahead
(to read the ricotta cheese recipe, scroll down)
The newest hit at Legume is the Broiled River View Farm’s Farmer’s Goat Cheese with Honey, Thyme and Dried Turkish Figs. It has  been selling out quickly so we tripled our cheese order this week and plan to have it as a menu staple for a month or so. The order doesn’t come until this Thursday, so we’ll be offering the equally delicious French Raclette with homemade pickles until then. Either way, it’s hard to go wrong with melted cheese.

Something much less popular but equally as good is the oven roasted pork belly appetizer. We prepare this much like our duck confit – curing it overnight, cooking it slowly in duck fat for several hours, and letting it cool and age in the duck fat until it is roasted in the oven to order. As much as we love it, this will be its last week on the menu due to its unpopularity.

We’ll be serving wild striped bass at the beginning of the week and plan to offer the first of the season’s Alaskan halibut towards the the weekend if it is available. If it looks like the weekend will be busy, we may even get some lobsters too. I would love to make halibut with lobster sauce like I ate once at Pilot’s Grill in Bangor, Maine, which was one of the best things I ever ate growing up.

Penn’s Corner Farmer’s Alliance continues to excite each week with new offerings. Among other things, we are particularly looking forward to the wild mustard greens and over-wintered parsnips.

Recipe: Ricotta Cheese
One of my favorite recipes of all time is Jasper White’s Roast Turkey recipe from Cooking From New England in which the first ingredient is “1 Vermont or other fresh turkey, about 10 pounds, fattened on corn and walnuts, killed three days earlier.”  While I doubt many of us will ever find a turkey raised exactly like that, the recipe beckons us to really consider the basic nature of the ingredients we are using when we cook.  Likewise, you don’t need to use Brunton’s buttermilk or Frank White’s whole milk to make this recipe.  However, after a year of making ricotta cheese at Legume with dairy products from various dairies in the area, we’ve found that this works the best.  And while I don’t know the scientific details of it, our experience is that using raw milk yields a better texture than pasteurized milk, probably because the proteins haven’t suffered the abuse of high temperature sterilization. 

1 gallon Frank White’s raw milk  
4 cups Brunton’s buttermilk
1 tsp of sea salt 

Put all of the ingredients in a thick-bottomed stainless steel pan.  Cook over low heat stirring occasionally with a wooden spoon, making sure to scrape the bottom of the pan.  As the curds begin to form, do your best not to break the “raft” of curds that begins to form at the top, though you should still scrape the bottom of the pan once in a while. (Brunton’s buttermilk is chunky and it is easy to confuse the buttermilk chunks with real curds.) When the whey begins to take on a slight greenish color, turn off the heat and let sit for fifteen minutes or so. Scoop off the curds and put into a strainer to drain.   

Sincerely, Trevett

March 16th, 2009 by Trevett

the week ahead
Flat irons are in.  Despite the imperfections of our fabrication technique – your flat iron may very well look like a trapezoid until we get better at butchering them – we’re still happy that we can sell prime grade, hormone and antibiotic-free steak for under $25.  And they taste really, really good.

March 9th, 2009 by Trevett

The week ahead
We’re trying some new things here this week: pheasant from the Kennedy family and a whole roasting pig from Penn’s Corners Farmers Alliance.  No promises that any of it will show up on the menu this week, since they’re new-to-us ingredients and the chance of botching them is moderate to high.  At the very least, we’ll learn something from it.  However, the pig will be a winner if it tastes as good as it is cute.

Now for things we are sure we know how to cook:

We’re supposed to get beef strip loins in on Tuesday.  The roast leg of Jamison lamb was fabulous last weekend and we plan to do it again later this week.  Also from the Jamison’s we’ll have lambs’ tongue at the beginning of the week and lamb sweetbreads towards the end.  

Despite being a wonderful vehicle for parmesan cheese and anchovies, I’m growing tired of seeing bags of romaine hearts in the walk-in.  86 Caesar salad.  Maybe we’ll do something with poor, underappreciated iceburg soon.  I keep seeing local greens on other Pittsburgh restaurant menus. Someone, please bring some to me.

In the seafood department, arctic char with lentils and mustard vinaigrette will be on the menu for Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. The tuna that came in last week was pristine, and we’re supposed to get more for this weekend.  The chile-rubbed mahi-mahi with pineapple salsa was a big hit last weekend and we hope to do it again this weekend too.   A rather adventurous dish for a kitchen of cooks who feel uncomfortable with tropical flavors, but we made it work somehow. Something about grinding the chile powder from whole dried chiles really keeps the aroma and flavor intact – much better than buying pre-ground chile powder.  With the delicious, ripe pineapple it’s a really nice primer for the lightness to come in the next few months.  

Spring Equinox Dinner: Sunday, March 22nd
Don’t forget to make your reservation for the coming spring equinox dinner featuring grains from Anson Mills.  While eating a bunch of grain may not sound like an appetizing way to celebrate the official coming of spring, you should know that these aren’t ordinary grains.  It’s because we’re so used to eating mediocre grains that it never occurs to us that eating this stuff can be an eye opening experience.  If you’ve always thought of polenta as nothing more than mushy stuff to put cheese and butter into, then you haven’t tasted Anson Mill’s polenta.  If hearing about whole wheat reminds you of the dense loaves of unedible bread that your mom used to make during her whole foods phase in the 1970′s, then you haven’t tasted homemade whole wheat crackers from freshly ground wheat or flapjacks from real graham flour (brunch hint).  But it’s not just a meal of grains.  The menu will also feature Jamison Lamb, fresh seafood, local cheese, preserved produce from last summer and a really yummy, decadent dessert to make it clear that eating good quality, natural food doesn’t have to be drudgery. Don’t forget the optional seed exchange – bring some you’d like to share and leave with some new ones. If you would like to request a table using our email reservation request form, please click here or give us a call.