Bragging about my wife and daughter out of the way, in the few moments of spare time I’ve had this week, I’ve been tracking down chefs to belatedly nail down this year’s Slow Food St. Louis Art of Food menu.  It’s not quite assembled 100% (come on guys!), but I just wanted to let you know one thing:

If you’re in town this Saturday, and you haven’t got anything planned, and you care a lick about local food, you need to get your butt down there. It’s Slow Food St. Louis’s biggest fundraiser of the year and it’s the reason we’ve been able to give over $12,000 to ten small farms over the last two years to increase the biodiversity of what’s available to us locally.

And if that’s not reason enough for you to go, know this: whatever excuse you have can’t possibly top the fact that I’ll be there and I’ll have a 7 day old daughter, and Josh Galliano will be there and he will have a 13 day old daughter.  (we are of course hoping this means stellar birthday parties!)

Here’s the menu thus far if you’re wavering, and I hope to see you there…

Annie Gunn’s – Lou Rook III

Roasted Viking Village Sea Scallop with Annie Gunn’s Bacon and Ratatouille.

Companion – Josh Allen

1. Panzanella “Bread Salad”  – Companion Roasted Garlic Fougasse w/ local heirloom tomatoes and cucumbers (working to identify farmer this week)

2. Grilled Bread Station with assorted pestos & tapenades

Five – Anthony Devoti

Benne’s Farm Pork confit, sesame cracker, tomato jam and pickled Claverach Farm baby carrots.

Harvest – Stephen Gontram

Harvest Bread Pudding

Kakao Chocolate – Brian Pelletier

1:Bacon Caramels Made with bacon from Hinkebein Hills Farms and local honey.

2: Chocolate Dipped Double-Layer Pates de Fruits

Local Harvest Café – Clara Moore

Horseradish Pickled Heirloom Tomato Relish on a Prairie Breeze Cheese Biscuit

Monarch – Josh Galliano

Prairie Grass Farms Goat Terrine, eggplant tapenade, Greek yogurt, fennel mostarda

Niche – Gerard Craft

white gazpacho, smoked grape sorbet

Sidney Street Café

Rabbit bratwurst with Companion brioche and house made sauerkraut

Winslow’s Home

Winslow’s Farm Cucumbers and Heirloom Tomatoes with pulled Prairie Grass Farm Lamb

and dishes still to come from…

Bailey’s Chocolate Bar, Farmhaus, Franco

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Babies, and Art, and Food, Oh My!

As an added bonus, 10% of all Hot Sauce proceeds will be donated to help fund important programs and services at Children’s Hospital.

For a taste of what’s in store, check out the new Erato on Main website.  Menus are updated each Friday so you’ll have a pretty good idea of what you’re in store for.

Full disclosure: As always, please keep in mind that while I believe my opinion to be correct, there are some establishments where my opinion is personally biased. This is one. Jonny “Style” Olson and other members of the Erato staff have become friends of mine because of my regularity in the restaurant.  Heck, Jon even guest-blogged once.

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Taking the Edge off E-Ville

Anyway, proving that lows can always get lower, White Castle has trumped their fans themselves, and I/we owe George Mahe the Eagle Eye Award for passing it along.  It seems White Castle has created Slider scented candles to benefit…

wait for it…..

Autism.

Like pineapples at the Soulard Market, one of these things does not belong with the other.

And I leave you with this anecdote: one of Ellie’s coworkers has a son with Autism.  They do not buy beef because the beef in the grocery store, being fed corn and soy, and pumped full of the types of crazy non-deliciousness you’d need to be a scientist to properly pronounce, causes some sort of issue with his Autism.  Not having a child with Autism, or a family member with Autism, I don’t know the specifics, but I have no reason to doubt them,

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American Fast Food, Harbinger of Weird

But screw all that, I’ll give you three reasons to attend the 2010 St. Louis Earth Day Festival

• The dope ass logo to the right will surely make a dope ass t-shirt when you pick one up in pink or brown for just $15.
• Slow Food St. Louis will once again be manning a booth in the Farmers’ Market where you can either a) say hello and see that I’m actually a swell guy or b) see me in person, tell me how much you hate me, and punch me in the face
• Prairie Grass Farm Lamb Gyros.  Need I really say more?  You know Dave and Barb Hillebrand from your time at the farmers’ markets.  You know their lamb isn’t just good for St. Louis.  It’s good anywhere. Period. And it’s especially good the few times a year they cut loose and bust out the gyro making mayhem that you do not want to miss.

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St. Louis Earth Day Festival This Sunday

Where most of the time you see black garlic as big, whole clove chunks, in this dish the black garlic is mixed in meaning that if you’re like me, and you forgot exactly what you ordered, it might leave you wondering, “what the heck is that unusual but delicious flavor?”  That’s black garlic my friend, and you need to go eat it before it’s gone.

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A Farmhaus Dinner Menu

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Nothing’s gonna ever keep me down

…

Thanks to the power of iMovie, it now has a sequel of vastly superior production quality

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And while we’re on the subject of beans, some not so useless information…

1. A lot of people pour out their bean soaking liquid instead of cooking the beans in it.  That’s a shame because there are a lot of nutrients–not to mention flavor–inside that water.  Keep it.

2. I have no scientific evidence to support this claim, but I have found that overnight soaking results in a more evenly cooked pot of beans.  Certainly, with something natural, and not quite uniform like dried beans, you’re going to get a little variation in cooking, but it definitely seems to be reduced with a good 12 hour soak.

3. The overnight soaking seems to also reduce flatulence.

4. Big beans tend to need more than an inch of water.  By big I mean something like the scarlet runner beans Rancho Gordo sometimes sells. I’ll try to take a better picture of mine to show scale because they’re practically the size of in-shell pecans.

5. Many people will tell you not to put salt in your bean cooking water.  I think that’s bogus and I do it–though depending on the cooking length of the beans, I might do it midway through.  I also put in some olive oil and a bay leaf.  I have no particular reason for doing that which I’m aware of.  I just do.

6. You can actually cook beans without overnight or fast soaking.  They just take longer to cook.  See ,also, #3.  I have especially  noticed that issue with cannelini beans.

7. We eat a lot of beans.

8. We buy them from Phipp’s Country Store (which Atlas turned us on to) or Rancho Gordo.  Quality has been the same from both, with Phipp’s sometimes being cheaper.

8. My favorite beans are Steuben Yellow Eye Beans, though the Alubia Criollo’s in the video were outstanding.  They were very meaty.

And finally, a bonus useless tip–or clarification…

1. I didn’t mention it in that video, but bring the beans to a boil and then pull them off the burner and let them soak. Don’t just leave them at a boil for an hour.

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Useless Cooking Tip #2: Fast Soaking Beans

You make a ham hamburger that’s what you do.  You put it on a toasted English muffin, and you top that bitch with Prairie Breeze cheddar cheese and Chipotle Garlic Jelly from Louisville.

…you also hope everyone else’s monitor is more color-accurate than the right monitor of your two monitor setup.

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Lunch Dilemma?

One book I’ve read recently–or reread as it were–is Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style.  The forward once again captivated me in a way that the subject rarely is, and as I neared it’s end and saw who wrote it, I am embarrassed to admit that I had not previously considered that the White half of Strunk and White, is E.B. White; the author of Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little.

You see, of late I have also been reading Letters of E. B. White; all the while in shock that a man who is best known for writing children’s books writes with such grace.  Connecting the dots, it would appear I now have a new author to count amongst my favorites, and here is one food-related E.B White quote, from a letter he wrote to Bennet Cerf regarding Charlotte’s Web, that I am especially fond of.

A farm is a peculiar problem for a man who likes animals because the fate of most livestock is that they are murdered by their benefactors. The creatures may live serenely but they end violently, and the odor of doom hangs about them always.

I have kept several pigs, starting them in the spring as weanlings and carrying trays to them all through the summer and fall. The relationship bothered me. Day by day I became better acquainted with my pig, and he with me, and the fact that the whole adventure pointed toward an eventual piece of double-dealing on my part lent an eerie quality to the thing.

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Connecting the Dots

For weeks I’ve scoured many of your Twitter feeds.  Sometimes I found the St. Louis restaurants, chefs, and other food-related accounts I hoped to. But then I also found things that would make for a bizarre demographic study of St. Louis foodsters.  Like, apparently, a lot of you are LeVar Burton fans.  At first I wondered, are you Reading Rainbow fans or Trekkies? And then I looked at LeVar Burton’s Twitter feed and along with learning that he felt The Who’s halftime show sucked and if you call him during Lost he will hurt your feelings, he has 1,607,229 followers.

But why the research?  Because Twitter blessed us with lists so that we can create organized feeds of people we don’t actually want to follow personally.  And that gave me the opportunity to waste my time assembling four lists that encompass every restaurant, chef, grocer and coffee shop located in St. Louis currently on Twitter. Word Up!

Click the links above and if I missed any, let me know @stlbites.

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#stl Twits