I like most vegetables and like to try different ways to prepare them. While I’ve always been a fan of cauliflower, there are many people who shy away from it. I suspect this is because they’ve always had it boiled, steamed, or raw, which while appealing to some, doesn’t bring out much depth of flavor. So after reading Michael Ruhlman’s post about roasted cauliflower I’d been anxious to try it. I picked up a nice, fresh head at the West Side Market and told Renée what I intended to do with it.  She was nonplussed. “I don’t really like cauliflower,”" she said, “so do what you want because I probably won’t have any.” Knowing how she appreciates good food, I remained confident.

Here’s all you need:

Preheat your oven to 425˚F/220˚C. Cut the stem off the cauliflower as close to the base as possible and remove any leaves. Rub oil all over the cauliflower. Put the cauliflower in an oven-proof skillet. Slide the pan into the oven and roast the cauliflower for 45 minutes. Remove it from the oven and smear the soft butter over the surface. Sprinkle with a four-finger pinch of salt.  Roast the cauliflower for another 30 to 45 minutes, basting it several times with the butter, which will have browned.  The cauliflower in the picture was roasted a total of 60 minutes. It’s done when you can insert a paring knife into it and feel no resistance. It should be completely tender.

As it roasted Renée commented how good it smelled. And it did. I had to step outside to clean the snow off Ali’s car before she left for the evening and when I walked back into the kitchen the aroma of the roasting cauliflower teased my taste buds. I couldn’t wait to try it! It was tender throughout but the browned outside edges and the bottom had a bit of a crunch that made the overall texture really terrific. The browned butter and salt were the perfect companions.

I gave Renée a little taste and she immediately went back for more. “Seriously, I don’t even like cauliflower,” she said, “but this is really good. I think if you salted and buttered anything I would eat it. And you can quote me on that.”

Thanks, honey; I just did.

If Ali is home you’re likely to find her endlessly watching “Friends” on DVD, even though she’s seen every episode so many times she can quote the lines right along with the actors. So when it came time to title this post I looked to one of her favorite shows for inspiration. You may find the menu inspiring enough on it’s own.

I like to cook special things for special occasions and believe that food and cooking are powerful ways to express love, offer hospitality, and bring people together to share in the experience. Since it was Renée’s birthday yesterday we invited a few friends over for dinner with a menu of her choosing. Being a Maryland girl, she loves seafood, so I turned to my trusty James Beard cook books and found a few entrée recipes for her to choose from. For an appetizer, I suggested something from Michael Symon’s Live To Cook. For dessert, Renée chose something she’d seen Chef Anne Burrell make on Food Network. So here’s the Brewer’s Daughter‘s birthday menu:

Appetizer: Roasted Dates with Pancetta, Almonds, and Chile

Entrée: Shrimp Floridian en Papillotte

Dessert: Panna Cotta with Roasted Figs and Balsamic

The One With Dates

This is one of the best kind of dishes: it’s easy to make and has complex, layered flavors. The sweetness of the dates and the saltiness of the pancetta combine with the almonds and spicy heat of the chile flakes for a perfect balance of intense taste elements.

Begin by preheating your oven to 350°F. Put the dates on a small rimmed baking sheet and roast them in the oven until heated through, about 5 minutes. Turn off the oven but leave the dates in there while you cook the pancetta.

In a medium sauté pan over medium heat, cook the pancetta until it is three-quarters crisp, about 5 minutes. Add the almonds and continue cooking until they brown, a few minutes. Add the garlic and cook for another minute or so. Add the red pepper flakes and stock and bring to a simmer, scraping the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon. Remove the pan from the heat and whisk in the butter, stirring continuously until the butter is melted. Stir in the lemon juice and parsley.
Add the dates to the pan and swirl and toss them in the sauce. Divide the cooked dates among four to six plates and spoon the sauce over them.

The One With Shrimp

This recipe combined two of the things that Renée loves most: seafood and blue cheese. Like the dates, it’s easy to prepare–unless you have to peel and devein the shrimp like I did, which isn’t hard, just time-consuming–and it can be prepped ahead of time and popped into the oven while your guests are enjoying their apps. The creamy, flavorful cheese mixture marries with the juice of the lemon to bathe the shrimp in a wonderful sauce.

Blend the blue cheese with the cream cheese and the chives, parsley, and garlic. Thin the mixture with the wine.

Take four large squares of aluminum foil and heap one-quarter of the cheese mixture on each. Top with a quarter of the shrimp and a slice of lemon. Bring the edges of the foil up over the shrimp and fold them together. Fold up the ends of the foil to make a tight package. Arrange packages on a baking sheet and bake in a 400 degree oven for 20 minutes. Simply unwrap and enjoy!

The One With Heavy Cream

Panna cotta is a soft, creamy, eggless custard whose name literally means ‘cooked cream’. This dessert continues the theme of easy to make but flavorful dishes. Despite its luxurious texture and elegant presentation, panna cotta is easy to prepare and is a blank slate for many added flavors. The fig topping adds a terrific contrast to the wonderful texture and sweetness of this dessert.

The first step is to soften the gelatin. Here’s where it got interesting. I couldn’t find sheet gelatin. In fact, the people in the grocery stores I went to didn’t even know what it was. So I bought powder. Then I had to figure out what the ratio was for converting sheet gelatin to powder. I posted the question to Michael Ruhlman on Twitter and got a plethora of responses. Based on that Twitter exchange, Chef Dan Moody was kind enough to put together an entire blog post outlining the conversion from sheet to powder. Thanks, Chef!

For sheets, submerse the gelatin sheets in a small bowl of cool water to soften. If using powder, sprinkle the powder over the surface of 2-3 tablespoons of cold water and allow it to bloom for several minutes. Make sure you don’t just dump it in; the powder in the center won’t absorb enough water. If it doesn’t absorb enough water, the gelatin and your dessert will be grainy. I used a bit too much water, so although my panna cotta did set up, it was not as firm as I would have liked.

In a small saucepan combine the cream and 1 cup sugar. Slit the vanilla bean lengthwise and scrape the seeds. Add the seeds and the hull of the vanilla bean to the saucepan. Whisk to combine. Bring the mixture to a boil and turn off immediately. Remove the softened gelatin sheets from the cool water and whisk into the hot cream mixture. Remove and discard the vanilla bean. Pour immediately into serving dishes and refrigerate for 2 to 3 hours or overnight.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Toss the figs together with the remaining sugar and balsamic. Let macerate for about 15 minutes. Roast in the preheated oven for 15 minutes or until the figs are soft and the sugar and balsamic have started to caramelize on the figs.

Top the panna cotta with the roasted figs and enjoy! (This paired really well with New Holland Dragon’s Milk Oak Barrel Ale!)

It All Comes Together

In addition to what I made, Renée put together a wonderful salad with toasted pine nuts, dried cranberries, mushrooms, cherry tomatoes, English cucumber and a terrific balsamic vinaigrette. Each dish had it’s own opportunity to shine, but together I think it made for a special birthday dinner for my beautiful bride and our wonderful friends. She’s always proud of my cooking and I’m always proud to serve her something that makes her happy.

The culinary history of Beef Wellington is a bit of a mystery. Many theories exist as to its origin–all of them lacking hard evidence–but none support invention any earlier than the 20th Century. The earliest recipe found titled “Beef Wellington” was published in 1940 in The Palmer House Cook Book and is a much simpler version than the classic which came to prominence in the 1960s. Beef Wellington was the premier party dish of the time: it was rich, dramatic, expensive, and seemed difficult and time-consuming to prepare. As couples started engaging in culinarily keeping up with the Jones, dinner parties became elaborate as complicated recipes were prepared more frequently. Beef Wellington was considered difficult and expensive because it required puff pastry and pate de foie gras. It defined what a gourmet dish should be.

While it is not known exactly who invented Beef Wellington, there is a long Anglo-Irish-French tradition of meat cooked in pastry. The Wellington steak of England, the steig Wellington of Ireland, and the French dish known as Filet de Boeuf en Croute could all claim influence. Whether the English, the Irish, or the French first baked filet of beef in a crust we may never know, but I think we can be fairly sure the French would not have named it after Wellington.

The classic Beef Wellington is a fillet of beef tenderloin coated with pate de foie gras and a duxelles of mushrooms that are then all wrapped in a puff pastry crust. “Wellington” is sometimes informally used to describe other dishes in which meat is baked in a puff pastry; the most common variations use sausage, lamb, or salmon.

While watching the finale of The Next Iron Chef: Super Chefs, Chef Elizabeth Falkner chose Beef Wellington as one of her dishes. Both Renée and I thought it looked great and although I’d seen it before and knew of the dish, I couldn’t remember ever ordering it in a restaurant and I’d never prepared it before. A quiet Christmas Eve dinner with my bride seemed like the perfect time give it a go as part of the celebration.

Chef Falkner wrapped her tenderloin with prosciutto instead of pate and I liked that idea, so I decided to do the same.

Duxelles is made with any cultivated or wild mushroom, depending on the recipe. Wild porcini mushrooms provide a much stronger flavored than white or brown mushrooms. Fresh is best but reconstituted dried varieties work, too. Leftover duxelles can be spread on toasted slices of baguette to make a crostini or can also be filled into a pocket of raw pastry and baked as a savory tart.

To make duxelles, add mushrooms, shallots, garlic, and thyme to a food processor and pulse until you get a finely chopped mixture. Add butter and olive oil to a large saute pan and set over medium heat. Add the mushroom and shallot mixture and saute for 8 to 10 minutes or until most of the liquid has evaporated. You want a paste-like consistency. Season with salt and pepper and set aside to cool.

If you choose to make your own puff pastry, there are plenty of recipes out there, but  many of the frozen varieties are quite good and easy to work with. Depending on the tenderloin you get, you may have to tie the tenderloin in 4 places so it holds its cylindrical shape while cooking. Mine was pretty solid, so I didn’t tie it. Drizzle it with olive oil, then season with salt and pepper and sear all over, including the ends, in a hot, heavy-based skillet lightly coated with olive oil – about 2 to 3 minutes per side. Meanwhile set out your prosciutto on a sheet of plastic wrap on top of your cutting board. Make sure the plastic is about a foot and a half in length so you can wrap and tie the roast up in it. Lay the prosciutto in overlapping layers so it forms a rectangle that is big enough to encompass the entire filet of beef. Use a rubber spatula to cover the prosciutto evenly with a thin layer of duxelles. Season the surface of the duxelles with salt and pepper and sprinkle with fresh thyme leaves. When the beef is seared, remove from the heat, cut off the twine if you tied it and coat lightly all over with Dijon mustard. Allow to cool slightly, then roll up in the duxelles covered prosciutto using the plastic wrap to tie it up nice and tight. Tuck in the ends of the prosciutto as you roll to completely encompass the beef. Roll it up tightly in plastic wrap and twist the ends to seal it completely and hold it in a nice log shape. Set in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes to ensure it maintains its shape.

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. (See below for Fingerling Potatoes.)

On a lightly floured surface, roll the puff pastry out to about a 1/4-inch thickness. Depending on the size of your sheets you may have to overlap 2 sheets and press them together. Remove beef from refrigerator and unwrap the plastic. Set the beef in the center of the pastry and fold over the longer sides, brushing with egg wash to seal. Trim ends if necessary then brush with egg wash and fold over to completely seal the beef – saving ends to use as a decoration on top if desired. Top with coarse sea salt. Place the beef seam side down on a baking sheet.

Brush the top of the pastry with egg wash then make a couple of slits in the top of the pastry using the tip of a paring knife – this creates vents that will allow the steam to escape when cooking. Bake for 40 to 45 minutes OR until pastry is golden brown and beef registers 125 degrees F on an instant-read thermometer. Remove from oven and rest before cutting into thick slices. Garnish with minced chives, and serve with Roasted Fingerling Potatoes.

Preheat oven to 500 degrees F and place a baking sheet inside to heat.

Add potatoes, rosemary, sage, thyme, and garlic to a medium bowl. Drizzle with olive oil, and season with salt and pepper. Remove sheet pan from oven, lightly coat with olive oil, and pour potatoes onto pan. Place potatoes in oven and reduce heat to 425 degrees F. Roast for 20 minutes, or until crispy on outside and tender on inside.

I preheated the oven to 500 F then lowered it to 425 F before putting the beef in. I planned to cook the beef for 15-20 minutes, then put the potatoes in until the beef reached the proper temperature. My tenderloin cooked in only about 25 minutes, so I put it in the microwave to rest until the potatoes were finished.

Renée and I really liked this dish. It was rich, flavorful, and complex. Besides the obvious upside of a nice beef tenderloin, this dish does have a certain elegance to it. I can appreciate why it was such a popular choice among dinner party hosts. Regardless of its reputation, this is not difficult to make. If does take some time, but good cooking is worth it. If nothing else, I think I found a new tradition for Christmas Eve at our house.

Proper grammar notwithstanding, I know you’re thinking, ” Hey, Paul is dead right; there AREN’T enough songs about squash!” But before you waste a portion of your day trying to scratch out some lyrics for “The  Crookneck Squash Blues”, you might want to take a listen to this song by Australian singer/songwriter Darren Hanlon. Sadly, it’s about the other type of squash, the one that involves a racquet. Maybe if I send Darren some new lyrics he’ll do a version honoring the vegetable. One can only hope.

As for the cooking with squash, I’ve written about acorn and pattypan squash, and pumpkins before but with the wide variety of squash available year round and a plethora of great recipes for them, you can easily see the versatility of the squash family of vegetables.

It was our turn to host dinner club last night and the theme was “Fall Harvest”, so I decided to call on the acorn squash once again as our main dish and prepared Sausage and Apple Stuffed Acorn Squash.  I liked this recipe because I thought the sweetness of the squash would pair very well with the spicy sausage. It was easy to prepare and was enjoyed by all. I tripled the recipe for dinner club, but here’s what you’ll need to prepare 4 servings:

Start your oven at least 15 minutes before you intend to use it and set it to 15 degrees below your intended temperature. This ensures that the interior of the oven will reach a uniform temperature. After you put your ingredients in the oven, turn it up to the proper temperature. Since you lose heat when you open the door, you can be sure that the oven will get up to temp quickly by jump starting the heating cycle yourself.

Combine the melted butter, garlic salt, and ground sage and brush it over the cut sides and cavity of the squash. Add salt and pepper to taste and bake in a large roasting pan, cut side up, at 400 degrees F for 1 hour or until squash is tender yet still holds its shape.

While the squash is baking, fry the pork until light brown then remove it to a strainer to drain. Keep 2 tablespoons of drippings in the pan and add the onions, celery, and mushrooms. Sauté about 4 minutes or until tender. Stir in the apples and sauté 2 more minutes.

Combine the pork, onions, celery, mushrooms, and apples with the breadcrumbs in a large bowl. Taste and season with the fresh sage, salt and pepper, then stir in the egg and 2 T fresh parsley.

Fill the squash halves with stuffing until slightly mounded. Return the squash to the over and bake, covered, for 20 more minutes, until the egg is set.  Top with shredded Romano cheese and garnish with the remainder of the parsley.

You may, like I did, have extra stuffing left over from this recipe. It goes really well in an egg scramble for breakfast and also would make a great filling for a savory breakfast pastry. I think it would also be delicious in turkey, chicken, or peppers.

Give it a try and let me know what you think! I’ll look for your music videos on YouTube.

Reading the ingredients on a food package can be daunting (unless you happen to be a food chemist), disheartening, maddening, and down right scary. In most cases, it’s not possible to imagine what those ingredients actually look like raw or in the places where they grow because, frankly, they don’t exist in nature in their raw state. Following this rule will help eliminate lots of chemicals and foodlike substances from your daily consumption.

A former Romanian Orthodox church-turned-playhouse in Cleveland’s Gordon Square Arts District served as the perfect venue for “Sacri-licious”, a little theater of the palate presented by Touch Supper Club Chef Jeff Fisher. As if any validation were necessary, Chef Fisher’s creations generated more than their share of deity-oriented responses. Fisher, who hails from Kingston, New Hampshire, learned to revere cooking with fresh ingredients from his mother, often using the family’s garden as a source. He began working in restaurants when he was 12 and eventually came to Ohio’s Ashland University to play basketball and football. Following college, Fisher worked at Cleveland’s Johnny’s Restaurant along side many top chefs where he began to appreciate ingredients from around the world. Chef Fisher has also been executive chef at Sushi Rock, Johnny’s Snickers, and Martini’s and was also a partner in a restaurant in Tremont for a short time. In addition to his duties as executive chef at Touch, Chef Fisher is also involved with the Chef’s Garden & Culinary Vegetable Institute in Huron, Ohio. There he assists in planning menus and preparing private dinners for exclusive events while having the opportunity to work alongside some of the best chefs in the country such as Charlie Trotter and Ferran Adria. Cleveland is fortunate to have him.

Communion

Wafer + House made wine

Chef Fisher began the evening by thanking his wife in true theatrical fashion. He hand-warmed a heart-shaped balloon that had been cooled in liquid nitrogen until it had expanded to full size and presented it to his wife. Then, wishing those in attendance “a religious food experience” he invited all to come to the front of the church for “communion” consisting of chicken foie gras with kumquat marmalade on a crostini served with a shot-sized glass of wine. It was aptly named and an apropos beginning to the upcoming shared-in-common meal.

Course 1

Hot tomato water with mini gnocchi, grape tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, Spanish cured chorizo, and a poached quail egg + El Diablo Ketchup Martini

Quoting Genesis, Chef Fisher intoned, “God said, ‘Let there be fowl to fly free across the land and let them live freely,’ which prompted the discussion of which came first, the chicken or the egg? Well, I think it was the egg.” Another noteworthy passage from Chef Fisher on this dish: the Pilgrims considered tomates to be the fruit of the devil and thought they were deadly poisonous, so  juice of the devil serves to combine with the egg of the fowl in a decadent cocktail served up with an equally decadent beverage. If you’ve not had tomato water and you love tomatoes like I do, this was a treat. Tomato water is easy to make and serves as a base for Bloody Marys, a flavoring for beer or vodka, a base for gazpacho or cocktail sauce, a poaching liquid for shrimp, calamari or lobster, a dressing for fresh oysters, a marinade for white fish, a vinaigrette mix-in, or drunk chilled and over ice with basil. Sweet tomatoey goodness with exploding grape tomato flavor bombs made this a heavenly dish. Coupled with the Touch-made ketchup and infused-pepper vodka Martini, it was a lycopene lovers dream.

Course 2

St. Germain cured salmon tartar, with squid ink tweil, savory lemon curd, caramelized sweet Maui onions & créme fraiche + St. Germain Lime Soda

“At the Last Supper, Jesus dined on fish and if I were having my last supper this is one of the courses I would have,” preached Chef Fisher from his culinary pulpit. It was a fitting intro to a wonderful dish. The squid ink tweil was the lynch pin of this offering and I was surprised at how it brought the entire dish together. I’d heard descriptions of squid ink as tasting inky or iodized, but the taste that I think best describes it is umami, sometimes described as a pleasant “brothy” or “meaty” taste. However you describe it , it definitely added a pleasant, savory element to the salmon.  St. Germain was bishop of Paris and was canonized in 754. In modern times he is known as “Father of the Poor”. As far as I’m concerned he’s also known as “Father of some pretty good cocktails”. The St. Germain Liqueur is made from wild elderflower blossoms that are collected by hand every Spring. It was very refreshing, in a decidedly Kramer sort of way. The company describes it as “neither passionfruit nor pear, grapefruit nor lemon, the sublime taste of St-Germain hints at each of these and yet none of them exactly.” Exactly. This was my favorite cocktail and dish of the evening. Until…

Course 3

Lamb carpaccio, tempura battered egg yolk, crispy fennel and shallots, Parmesan cheese and truffle oil + Catcher In The Rye

“The protector of the Israelites was the Lamb of God, so with that in mind I thought to do a lamb carpaccio,” evangelized Chef Fisher. He explained that he butchered a lamb ending up with about 15 pounds of meat that he would into a sausage style, froze it, and shaved carpaccio style. He also added, “I’ll never do that again!”  Believe me Chef, it was worth it! Served with a fresh baguette toast point, capers, and a Moroccan salt-cured olive,  the lamb was velvety soft and almost melted in my mouth. This was an inspired combination that evoked the words “Iron Chef-like”. Every bite was a perfect mélange of flavor and texture. I feel fortunate to have been present for this little slice of culinary enlightenment. The Cather In The Rye cocktail consisted of rye bourbon with a little balsamic fennel bitters which complemented the lamb wonderfully.

Course 4

Asian braised pork belly, with forbidden rice and blood orange star anise sauce, five spice cotton candy + Grapes Of Wrath

For this course, Chef Fisher played on the fruit of the vine and forbidden fruit mentioned in the Bible. “It’s never been precisely determined what that fruit was, but we believe it was grapes,”  he said. The Grapes Of Wrath cocktail reminded me of fall in Northwestern Pennsylvania, where the aroma of Concord grapes wafts through the air hinting at the fresh juice and jelly that is to come. With an ingredient list including grape vodka, sake, frozen grapes and Litchi syrup fulfilled the forbidden fruit role beautifully. As for the dish, the succulent, juicy pork belly and the forbidden rice–a lemon grass ginger sushi rice–along with the blood orange star anise sauce would have resurrected pure dining satisfaction in anyone all by themselves. The pasta cross was a playful touch, but the real surprise was the five spice cotton candy. It was unexpected, counterintuitive, out of context. And delicious. Taken together, this was another truly inspired combination that solicited praise from the pews.

Dessert

Beet foam with angel food cake, devil’s food cake, passion fruit coulis, with raspberry teardrops +Right of Passage

“There’s always an eternal struggle between heaven and hell.  You’re either going to go to heaven or you’re going to go to hell. If you don’t go to heaven or hell you’re stuck in purgatory. Sometimes when you feel like there’s absolutely no love in your life, things seem to break. There needs to be an equilibrium.” And throwing a frozen rose into the middle of the church, shattering its tender petals, thus spake Chef Fisher as an introduction to the final course of the evening. The beet foam was sweet and earthy, the angel food cake light and delicious while the devil’s food cake was rich and decadent. The “stigmata raspberry teardrops” signified the pain that the angels deal with in the “tyranny between heaven and hell”.  The Right of Passage cocktail consisted of two espresso-sized drinks signifying heaven and hell. The first, a warm plum brandy with caramelized sugar. The second, cold Grappa and Limoncello. Both were fitting bookends to the Biblically-themed dessert.

We came empty and left fulfilled; truly sated by Chef Fisher’s offerings. This culinary mass has ended. Go in peace.

What better way to beat the winter doldrums than by enjoying good food, good friends and good times at a great price–that’s what Downtown Cleveland Restaurant Week offers Monday, February 21-Sunday, February 27.

During that time you’ll find expansive prix fixe lunch and dinner menus, and a chance to experience some great beer, wine and food pairings throughout the week.  Also, you’ll find discounted $2 parking after 5 p.m. by a number of downtown facilities.

Highlights include:

Monday, February 21

• Vodka Tasting @ Corner Alley

Enjoy a vodka tasting at our Martini Bar from 4-6 p.m. The Corner Alley, 402 Euclid Ave., 216-298-4070, www.thecorneralley.com

Tuesday, February 22

• Chocolate Fountain Happy Hour @ Chocolate Bar

Join us for happy hour from 4-6 p.m. and delight in our complimentary chocolate fountain with tasty dippables. Chocolate Bar, 347 Euclid Ave., 216-622-2626, www.originalchocolatebar.com

• A Taste of Italy @ Chinato

Savor Italy’s best with a wine flight of either 3 reds or 3 whites included with our prix fixe dinner.

Chinato, 2079 East 4^th St., 216-298-9080, www.chinatocleveland.com

Wednesday, February 23

• Organic Cocktail Showcase @ Encore

Enjoy an organic cocktail included with purchase of prix fixe dinner at downtown’s leader in organic, sustainable liquors. Encore/Blue Bar at the Wyndham Hotel, 1260 Euclid Ave., 216-615-3307,http://www.wyndham.com/hotels/CLEPS/

• A Taste of Ireland @ Flannery’s Pub

After a tasty meal in our dining room, enjoy fine Irish whiskey by our fireplace. Learn about distilling and variations, brought to you by Jameson Irish Whiskeys and Flannery’s. $1/person includes whiskey tasting and appetizers. Limited availability; reservations suggested. Flannery’s Pub, 323 Prospect Ave., 216-781-7782, www.flannerys.com

Thursday, Feb. 24

• The Dog Days of Winter @ Wonder Bar

Beat the winter blues with our prix fixe dinner that includes a beer tasting with John Najeway from Thirsty Dog Brewing (beer tasting only is $5/ticket). Stay for live reggae with Dubflex from 8-10 p.m. For reservations email Andrea at kayakandrea8@gmail.com. Wonder Bar, 2044 East 4^th St., 216-298-4050, www.wonderbarcleveland.com

• Food and Abita Beer Pairing @ Fat Fish Blue

A showcase of Abita beers paired with tasty foods: SOS paired with crawfish, Restoration Pale Ale paired with crab cakes, Amber paired with BBQ ribs and Carolina mustard, Abbey Ale paired with BBQ ribs and Blueberry Habanero and Andygator Helles Dopplebock paired with BBQ ribs and traditional sauce. $7/person includes Abita souvenir glass and t-shirt. Limited availability; reservations required. Fat Fish Blue, 21 Prospect Ave., 216-875-6000, www.fatfishblue.com

Friday, Feb. 25

• Champagne Tasting @ Pickwick and Frolic

Join us for happy hour from 6-9 p.m. and enjoy a champagne tasting with appetizer purchase at Champagne Bar, the only bar specializing in champagne in town. Pickwick & Frolic, 2035 East 4^th St., 216-241-7425,www.pickwickandfrolic.com

• Sake Tasting @Sushi Rock

Sample assorted premium sake with your $30 prix fixe dinner. Sushi Rock, 1276 West 6^th St., 216-623-1212, www.sushirockohio.com

Saturday, Feb. 26

• Dessert and Martini Bar @ Cadillac Ranch

Don’t miss our special $30 prix fixe dinner that includes dessert and martini bar…and a ride on our mechanical bull. Cadillac Ranch, 200 Euclid Ave., 216-685-0000, http://cadillacranchgroup.com/cleveland.html

Sunday, Feb. 27

• Service Industry Night @ Greenhouse Tavern

Calling all service industry workers! Join us from 9-11 p.m. for a party in your honor with karaoke and $2 food/drink specials! Greenhouse Tavern, 2038 East 4^th St., 216-443-0511, www.thegreenhousetavern.com

For additional details on these events and a full listing of participating restaurants, visit www.downtowncleveland.com orhttp://downtownclevelandalliance.com/events/restaurant-week.aspx.

Chef Nowak explains his dishes to the Chef's table.

For its second event, Emerging Chefs celebrated the 77th anniversary of the end of Prohibition in style as Bar Cento Executive Chef Michael Nowak presented his 5-course take on Depression Era food. The Speakeasy at Mc Nulty’s Bier Markt served as the perfect venue enabling fetchingly-dressed guests to envision themselves in a secret club enjoying great food and cocktails of the era: the Rye Old Fashioned, a classic American cocktail; the Scofflaw, named after a term coined during prohibition to describe illegal drinkers with a sense of humor about the drinking ban; the Stone Fence, a Fall whiskey cocktail dating back to the late 1700’s popularized in the 1930’s; the Sidecar, a French concoction popularized during WWI and a speakeasy classic; the Bees Knees, an early era gin cocktail; and the Aviation Cocktail made with gin, maraschino liqueur, lemon juice and crème de violette. After trying one, I think I know why it’s called an Aviation Cocktail. If you were short on airplane fuel you could burn this drink and get airborne just fine.

Just 27 years old, Chef Nowak has worked with some of the city’s best chefs since beginning his career in the kitchen as a prep cook for the Nautica Queen when he was just 14. Along the way he’s worked in almost every kind of restaurant you can imagine, but got the inspiration to attend the New England Culinary Institute while working for Chef Pamela Waterman at the Park City Diner. Nowak returned in 2007 as part of the team that opened Restaurant Dante with Chef Dante Boccuzzi. During that time he became friends with Chef Jonathon Sawyer and eventually accepted a chef position at the newly opened Bar Cento. Chef Nowak took over as head chef at the end of 2008 and continues to support local farmers and artisanal suppliers while creating an impressive and ever-changing menu. In addition to Bar Cento and Bier Markt he’ll also serve as executive chef for Market Garden Brewery when it opens in the spring and looks forward to creating a menu that will complement brewer Andy Tveekrem’s beers. “The food scene in Cleveland is exploding,” Chef Nowak told me, “There are more people eating out all the time and as more people embrace the great dining culture here, more chefs and cooks and sous chefs that are waiting will get their chance to open more great places.”

Chef Nowak created the menu for this event by researching menus from the 1930s. In an online database housed at the Los Angeles County Library, he found scans of menus and restaurant ads from newspapers from the 1920s to today. Culinary history is interesting and it can tell you a lot about a culture, a time frame, and what influenced the home cook as well as the chef. Several items came to light from this research and served as the basis for Chef Nowak’s modern interpretations of popular food of the time.

Our first course was Duck Consommé, a rich, flavorful cup of broth that was a common starter to many meals. This course set the table well for what was to follow. Consommé like this needs to make a comeback in and out of the home.

The second course showcased the vegetable of the era: celery. Still popular today, celery is a member of two classic cooking trios: Louisiana Creole and Cajun cuisine, along with onions and bell peppers, and the French mirepoix, celery, onions, and carrots which is often used as a base for sauces and soups. Celery was served in and on everything in the pre- and post-prohibition era and Chef Nowak’s Celery 3 Ways did it justice. First was celery and grape salad, a light refreshing beginning to the celery course consisting of green grapes, celery, raw celery leaves, and black truffle vinaigrette. I made a mental note to make this in the future the next time I wanted something simple yet impressive. Next was crab salad and celery seed on top of celery which tempered the palate for the grand finale of the celery course: the perfection salad. Another traditional dish of the day, our perfection salad was made in two layers, one from duck-flavored jell-o with celery root and another from mulled apple cider jell-o which made for a fantastic sweet and savory combination.

Our third course was Chef Nowak’s Italian interpretation of a classic: chicken livers. These were fried crisply and served with two sauces: an arrabiata sauce made with smoked tomatoes, capers, and anchovies and a lemon and garlic aioli. They were fantastic.

Next was the seafood course. Originally intended to be mackerel, but fluke proved a wonderful substitute due mackerel’s limited availability. Served with a salsa verde, parsley, pickled ramp balls, chives, Fresno chiles, and olive oil, it was light and full of complex flavors. Think you’ve never eaten fluke before? You may recognize it by the other name to which it’s referred: flounder.

We finished with veal tenderloin. This is one of the recipes found by Chef Nowak in the LA County Library database. It read simply “Crispy Veal with Bread Sauce and Stewed Tomatoes”, so Michael and his staff had fun recreating this one. This was a common dish served in homes as well as restaurants of the time. Chef Nowak breaded veal tenderloin medallions, fried them crispy, and coupled them with peeled cherry tomatoes stewed in an Italian sweet and sour sauce called Agrodolce. Agrodolce is made by reducing sour and sweet elements, traditionally vinegar and sugar. Sometimes, additional flavorings like wine, fruit, or even chocolate are added. The bread sauce consisted of pancetta brodo pureed with bread to thicken and add texture to the sauce. This was a great final course. The veal was tender, the breading crisp, and the stewed tomatoes were like little mouth bombs of flavor. Mental note number two: find Agrodolce recipes.

Finally, guests were treated to a special course on the way out: candy. Many candy classics were introduced in the Prohibition era including Tootsie Roll Pops, 3 Musketeers, and Heath Bars and guests were offered their choice as a “thank you” course to go. A sweet ending to a sweet evening.

In mid-October Renée and I spent a wonderful four day weekend in northern California (you can read about our trip and our journey in beer on Renée’s blog, the Brewer’s Daughter). The main reason for our trip was to attend Kaiser Permanente’s day-long Food for Health Forum in San Francisco.

Authors Michael Pollan and Mollie Katzen, food system experts, and Kaiser Permanente leaders provided fascinating discussions of the ways in which the health providers can help improve public health and the environment by fostering the availability of more sustainable food for families, patients and the community.

The day was kicked off by Dr. Maring who established the Friday Fresh Farmers’ Market at the Kaiser Permanente Oakland Medical Center in May 2003 featuring growers who are approved by the California Certified Organic Farmers’ Association. There are now 25 markets at Kaiser Permanente facilities in 5 states with plans for more. Dr. Maring began by talking about the reasons for holding such a conference, namely to learn about good food and how healthcare, public policy, commercial food distributors and the farming community can work together to promote healthy eating and sustainable food. Over 300 people attended.

The first speaker was Brenda Eskenazi, PhD, the Director of the Center for Children’s Environmental Health Research at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health. She presented some eye-opening stats about how pesticides impact the lives of farm workers and their families. For example, one half of all pesticide exposure occurred before the age of five and this affected long term IQ development.

Next was Judith Redmond, co-owner of Full Belly Farm. She shared a photo presentation which gave us a view into life on a working organic farm in the Capay Valley of California. We learned about her workers and the work they do to bring healthy food to families in the area. Great example of how a farm should be run.

Craig Watson, the VP of Agricultural Sustainability at Sysco talked about how Sysco works with local growers to provide their customers with the best products while keeping sustainability in mind. It was interesting hearing this perspective from a company like Sysco; it was something I hadn’t expected, but it made perfect sense.

A panel on Healthy Food in Health Care followed with a discussion of how purchasing habits and polices are changing to not only reduce procurement costs but provide healthier choices.

A fabulous lunch was next. Salad of fresh greens and pomegranate seeds, chicken in mango sauce with delicious roasted root vegetables, and butternut squash soup earned everyone’s praise. Mollie Katzen then gave a cooking demo and shared some great prep tips. She followed with a talk pointing out how cooking with three or four ingredients and few meat proteins can be easy, healthy and delicious.

Katzen was followed by a panel on Community Partners. Their stories detailed the challenges faced by those living in inner city areas where fresh fruits and vegetables are scarce. Making healthy choices available and showing area residents, including children, how to choose and prepare simple meals makes a huge impact. It was clear that it’s hard but rewarding work.

Michael Pollan, author of In Defense of Food and The Omnivore’s Dilemma presented the keynote. Pollan’s books take a hard look at what we eat, where it comes from, and how it’s marketed in this country. If you haven’t read any of his work, you need to. You’ll never eat the same again and you’ll be better for it. He carried two grocery bags up onto the stage and proceeded to read the ingredients on each item. Long, nearly unpronounceable chemical names were the norm. Pollan contends that lists of more than five ingredients reveal things that are “food-like substances”, not food.

Pollan’s latest book, Food Rules: an eater’s manifesto, of which we all received a copy, lays out a distilled version of his findings in a way that expands upon the message in In Defense of Food: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. Renée and I both read the book on the flight home. The book is comprised of 64 “rules” drawn not from nutrition science but from the sources we relied on before nutrition science existed: tradition and culture. Pollan contends this substantial pool of wisdom contains valid, common sense information that we can all use to be healthier and happier. After all, if this dietary knowledge were flawed, humans would not have survived and prospered as much as we have. The book is broken down into three parts: Part I – What should I eat? (Eat food.); Part II – What kind of food should I eat? (Mostly Plants.); Part III – How should I eat? (Not too much.) Each part consists of simple rules that read like common sense.  Pollan also argues that tradition and culture trump nutrition science because relatively speaking, nutrition science is still a young science–it’s about where surgery was in 1650–”very promising and interesting to watch, but are you ready to let them operate on you?” Please understand, I have tremendous respect for dietitians and nutrition scientists and I’m not disparaging their work, but I think we have to admit that what we’re doing isn’t working.

What we do know is this: populations that eat what’s referred to as a “Western diet” (lots of processed foods, added fat and sugar,  lots of refined grains, few veggies, fruits, or whole grains) suffer from high rates of Western diseases like obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancers. We also know that populations eating a wide range of traditional diets generally avoid these chronic diseases. These diets range from high fat to high carb to high protein. A more telling fact is that people who get off the Western diet see huge improvements in their health and research suggests that chronic health problems can be reversed and reversed relatively quickly.

Pollan’s collection of rules act as a guide you can follow when making healthy food choices. Most are simple and easy to remember: “Avoid foods that are pretending to be something they are not.” (Think butter vs. margarine.) Many have the potential to improve your enjoyment of food and your quality of life: “Spend as much time enjoying the meal as it took to prepare it.” All of them are thought provoking.

After reading the book, I told Renée that we should immediately act upon one–Food Rule #28: “If you have the space, buy a freezer.” Admittedly this is not earth-shattering  advice. But it is something that you may not have considered when trying to eat better. It will make it easier for you to buy in bulk when you can–a side of beef, or a whole hog. It will also enable you to preserve items you buy at the farmer’s market and encourage you to buy more produce at the height of its season when it is cheapest. I went to Home Depot and bought a 7.0 cubic foot GE model for $180 out the door. It will cost only about $30 a year to operate and it will hold about 275 lbs of food. That’s a lot of veggies and meat. It’s a small step now, but it’s a big one in the long run. We’ve already enjoyed the extra space and flexibility it offers us. I find myself thinking of things I can put in it and the money we’ll save on spoilage and through bargain shopping. (You can bet I’ll be buying another turkey after Thanksgiving when they go on sale!)

I want to thank Kaiser Permanente for allowing me to attend the Food For Health Forum. It was encouraging, enlightening, and informative. I know I’m better off and you will be too if you take the time to arm yourself with the knowledge to make better food decisions for yourself and your family.

I welcome your feedback!