January 28th, 2010 by Trevett

the week ahead
More Alaskan Cod arrived this afternoon. We sear off the cod, add a little white wine, stock, the mussels, leeks and tomatoes and steam everything together until the fish and mussels are done. Then we whisk the broth into a little aioli, put it back on the fire until the sauce thickens a bit and pour it over everything.
When it rains beef, it pours beef. We have short ribs from Keystone cooperative in Uniontown coming in on Thursday. Two cases of flat iron steaks are due in tomorrow. I’m expecting a quarter animal from Ron Gargasz any day now. Expect to see a lot of beef on the menu in the coming weeks.
Penn’s Corner is sending us an 80 pound pig on Thursday. The little guy supposedly ate squash most of its life and finished up with a little corn. Not sure what we’re going to do with it yet.
Diver scallops will be back this weekend if we can get them.

why we preserve vegetables
Almost everything we preserve at Legume can be bought from a purveyor pre-made. Often times, it would be cheaper to buy it this way by the time the labor, food cost and electricity involved in doing it ourselves are factored in. Nevertheless, the food we preserve ourselves in the summer has a special quality that is difficult to measure. When my cooks make peach compote in January from peaches they dried themselves the summer before, the cooking experience is a much deeper one than if they used dried peaches processed in a factory. My cooks know the farmer who brought the peaches to the restaurant. They have cared for the peach through cleaning, processing and careful storage of the peaches for months until it is time to prepare them to eat in the winter.

When a cook has this kind of relationship to the ingredients she is working with, she cannot help but have a deep appreciation and respect for the food. So much of the food available to restaurants nowadays lacks this direct connection. Even the stuff food purveyors try to market to restaurants as being “sustainable” and or “organic” often involve so many layers of processing, packaging and distribution that it barely resembles something those words are intended to describe. While it is very possible to make delicious tasting things with food from the big purveyors, it is impossible to inspire the same kind of respect and appreciation in the cook when she is so far removed from the basic origins of the ingredients.

This relationship to the basic origin of our food is the crux of everything we try to do at Legume. However, the shear volume of food that we cook day in and day out along with the razor-thin profit margins that restaurants work within means there is a lot of compromise along the way. At this point in time, we are not free from the industrialized food system to bring us much of our food. Nevertheless, working towards the goal of cooking with real food all of the time as if it were actually possible is important. Finding small ways of using hand made food wherever possible—pickles, dried fruits and vegetables, sausage, pasta, sauerkraut—is a little step in the right direction.

The Summer in January dinner this coming Sunday is not an attempt to make summer food in the winter; it is an attempt to commune with the place we live through eating some of the gifts from last summer we set aside through old-fashioned preservation. If there is one meal a year that represents our best intentions of making food that is an expression of Western PA, this is the one.

summer in january dinner: sunday, jan. 31
some of the dishes may include:
Broiled Raclette with Assorted Pickles
Duck and Rabbit Rillettes with Dried Peach and Spiced Prune Compotes
Grass-Fed Beef Borscht with Sour Cream
Maine Diver Scallops with Sun Gold Tomato, Roasted Garlic and Olive Relish
Buttermilk Pound Cake with Brandied Peaches and Caramel Sauce

$50 a person; seatings at 5:00 and 7:45 p.m. Give us a call or click here if you’d like to join us.

January 13th, 2010 by Sarah

the week ahead
January is here but that doesn’t mean there aren’t great things to eat from our part of the country.  This is the month when we begin using all of the things we pickled, dehydrated, brandied and salted last summer.  While pound for pound, most of the food we serve this time of year will still be from far away, the preserved stuff is a symbolic thread that connects our cooking from one growing season to another.  When it is dark and cold outside, a pickled yellow bean or a dried tomato can be a powerful reminder that the dark days of winter don’t go on forever.  There is still plenty of delicious fresh produce from our region such as squash, potatoes, lettuces, carrots, sunchokes and other delicious root vegetables.
While we’re happy to be making use of these beautiful foods from our region we’re not such purists that we would miss out on citrus, canned tomatoes, avocados or tropical fruits this winter. We love them and can’t imagine life without them. Fish too comes from hundreds, sometimes thousands of miles away to reach Pittsburgh. While we are doing a much better job now than in the past selecting fish that are supposedly sustainable, we still grapple with what it means to package and ship seafood long distances.

January 13th, 2010 by Sarah

Each summer we spend a great deal of time preserving vegetables and fruits. On January 31st, we will be cooking a special dinner that features the best of last summer’s harvest. Last summer we added dehydration to our repitoire of preserving methods and we are very pleased by the results, especially the dried tomatoes. Some of the preserved produce featured at this dinner will include pickled yellow beans, raisins, prunes, dried sun gold tomatoes, dried beets, pickled cherries, pickled garlic scapes, brandied and dried peaches, barrel-aged cider vinegar and tomato conserva. This pre fixe dinner will include seasonal fish and local meat. $50 a person; seatings at 5:00 and 7:45 p.m. Give us a call or click here if you’d like to request a reservation.