Stuff to do: October 2008 • by Byron Kerman
Posted On: 10/01/2008 E-mail This To A Friend!

CLASSES AND MEETINGS

Superfoods Workshop
Oct. 6 – 6 to 9 p.m., Viking Cooking School · 314.961.1999 www.vikingcookingschool.com

Oh, how right Popeye was about spinach. It’s not just good for you, it’s a “superfood” loaded with antioxidants for disease-fighting – a veritable bazooka blast of nutrition. Like spinach, blueberries, olive oil, tomatoes, beans, nuts and fish are all considered superfoods. And if you’re gonna eat them, you might as well make them taste divine. A one-night cooking class at Brentwood’s Viking Cooking School offers hands-on instruction to yield avocado temaki rolls with wasabi-miso dipping sauce; maple sweet-potato fries; seared black cod with Kaffir lime coconut broth; Asian greens with shiitakes; caramelized onion and white bean dip with vegetable chips; pomegranate refreshers; and blueberry-lemon crisp with dark chocolate squares. Mmm mmm.

St. Louis Dinner Club
Oct. 6 and 20 – 7:30 p.m., locations vary
www.stldinnerclub.org

You’re always saying you want to try this or that new restaurant. But actually getting off your duff after a long day of work and motorvating? It’s so much easier to open a six-pack of Pabst/bottle of Chardonnay/pint of Mad Dog 20/20 Pink Grapefruit flavor and watch The Daily Show from a supine position. So let St. Louis Dinner Club do the work for you. Foodie supercouple Jonathan and Stefani Pollack (he of the Sauce photography staff, she of www.cupcakeproject.com) gather a group of like-minded diners on the first and third Monday of each month. They meet at moderately priced restaurants all over the metro area. Past stops have ranged from Frank & Helen’s to Tachibana to Sasha’s Wine Bar to Pho Grand to Boogaloo to Broadway Oyster Bar. Now in its ninth year, St. Louis Dinner Club has exposed locals to the wonders of hundreds of area restaurants, one small group of adventurous eaters at a time. It’s not just a way to try restaurants new to you (and before they close, in some cases), but a totally laid-back way to make new friends.

Pumpkin-Carving Classes at Whole Foods Market
Oct. 11 and 18, Whole Foods Market’s Town and Country location · 636.527.1160 · www.wholefoodsmarket.com

’Tis the season to carve a pumpkin into a scary jack-o-lantern, with the face of a ghoul or Alexander Haig, maybe, so put the granddaddy of all squashes in your grocery cart and get on it. Teaching your kids how it’s done is the subject of a fun class at the Town and Country Whole Foods’ Lifestyle Center. First, Yibby the blademaster teaches various pumpkin-carving techniques to kids, and everyone will learn how to clean off, bake and eat the pumpkin seeds, too. A week later, Diane Vanbooven (who keeps things movin’) teaches an advanced pumpkin-carving class with carving, baking and eating the seeds, and pumpkin recipe tips. The classes are for kids of various ages and abilities, so call beforehand to see which is best for your little monsters and to register.

St. Louis Wine Club Blind Tasting
Oct. 19 – 5 p.m. · www.stlwineclub.com

“Oh, to live in a world without judging,” bemoans the St. Louis Wine Club’s Web site, in a plug for its Blind Tasting event. Well, relax, no one’s going to judge you if you can’t tell the difference between plonk and Chateau La Fancypants at the Blind Tasting get-together. Wine Club den mother Christina Edwards said that the fun includes a variety of reds and whites. The bottles will have been acquired for a range of prices. Guests will be encouraged to match unidentified bottles with their prices, as well the type of grape. It’s all in good fun, but it’s also a great way to educate your palate. The evening will conclude with another “blind matching” game for couples inspired by CBS’ Swingtown. Or not …


FAIRS AND FESTIVALS

Soulard Oktoberfest
Oct. 3 to 5, Soulard Market Park · 314.368.3419
www.soulardoktoberfest.com

Some of you don’t take kindly to scantily clad fräuleins slamming one-liter steins of beer down the table for you to drown yourself in to the belching soundtrack of an oompah band. Then you’d better not wander into Soulard’s Oktoberfest, a rousing tribute to the German festival sponsored by Anheuser-Busch and teeming with sausages, kegs of beer and not a few fräuleins. The wide variety of festival beers washes down a menu of bratwurst, smoked pork sandwiches, rotisserie chicken, pork knuckles, German potato salad, sauerkraut, German pretzels and strudel. Check out the St. Louis Home Brew Club demo and samples, and make eyes at the “world’s longest brat.” Don’t forget the European oompah and polka bands, dudes in lederhosen tooting on alphorns, the Budweiser Clydesdales, carnival rides, a BMW show, the Arch Rivals Roller Derby girls demo and Soulard Art Market show.

Greektoberfest
Oct. 4 – 4 to 11 p.m., Assumption Greek Orthodox Church 314.966.2255 · www.assumptiongoc.com

They’ve gotten all serious about the Greek wine for sale at the annual Greektoberfest at West County’s Assumption Church. The menu features an explanation of the flavors and regional characteristics of no less than seven white and eight red grape varietals, all from the land of Spartans and spanakopita. Consider the “black laurel” Mavrodaphne, used in dessert wines, or the smoky white Robola. You can sample these and many more from a greatly expanded wine selection before, during and/or after the gyros, souvlaki, feta cheese platters, and so on. The “pita pizza” is great for kids, and this year’s new Chocolate Hazelnut Baklava Sundae sounds splurge-o-riffic.

Best of Missouri Market
Oct. 4 and 5, Missouri Botanical Garden · 314.577.9400 www.mobot.org

If you’re the kind of schnorrer that likes to stroll down the aisles of Dierbergs on Saturday afternoons, cadging free samples till you’re sated, try the annual Best of Missouri Market. More than 120 area food producers sell their fruits, vegetables, honey, cheese, baked goods, flowers, herbs, nuts, candy, meats, mushrooms, spices, salsa, and on and on, and many of them hook you with a free sample. The annual Missouri Botanical Garden marketplace sets up under huge tents, so bring it on, inclement weather! Crafty types will want to browse the willow furniture, carved wooden birds, wreaths, decorative ironwork, soaps, pottery, custom jewelry, wooden toys, garden ornaments, etc. Don’t forget the live music, floral design and cooking demos, food court, and Kids’ Corner with cow milking, pumpkin decorating, a petting zoo and make-it-and-take-it crafts.


SPECIAL EVENTS

Pumpkin Chuck’n at Eckert’s
Hourly shows Fri. through Sun. in October, Eckert’s of Millstadt · 618.476.3260 · www.eckerts.com

“It’s like, wowwwwwwwww,” says Judy Eckert, describing the crowd reaction when the Jack-O-Lobber pneumatic cannon fires a pumpkin a full half-mile. The mad scientists at Eckert’s have created the ultimate boy’s fantasy: a toy gun that serves no real purpose except to fire vegetables so far away you can’t even hear them when they smash apart on the turf. Just don’t point that thing at the parking lot. While you’re at Eckert’s Millstadt Fun Farm (notice they don’t call it “the funny farm”) you can also enjoy apple- and pumpkin-picking, and a variety of festival foods featuring roasted sweet corn, chicken shish kabobs, hot dogs, bratwurst, corn dogs, kettle corn, homemade ice cream and funnel cakes. The titular fun includes a 70-foot underground “mine slide,” variety show, petting zoo, tractor rides, pony rides and haunted hayrides. The piglet races are adorable, too. And what are the piglets racing for? “Oreos,” says Eckert. “They get Oreos at the end. The pigs love those.”

Hops Art
Oct. 18 – 6 to 9 p.m., Art St. Louis (555 Washington Ave.) 314.241.4810 · www.artstlouis.org

Fall is the beginning of the arts season, and for the zymurgist (look it up), it’s the beginning of beer season. Art St. Louis celebrates both honorable pursuits with Hops Art. The benefit features a one-night-only group art show with the usual goodies, plus images of works by member artists projected onto walls and displayed on laptop computers. The flowing beer samples come courtesy of Miller, Schlafly and Samuel Adams; the hearty hors d’oeuvres are provided by Onesto Pizza & Trattoria and Fu Manchu.

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JACQUES PEPIN

Prolific cookbook author/culinary instructor/TV host Jacques Pepin is a whirlwind of epicurean activity. The legendary chef will visit St. Louis this month, and he slowed down just long enough to chat with Sauce’s Catherine Neville about his new cookbook.

What role do you hope your books – and especially your new book, More Fast Food My Way – will play in teaching and encouraging home cooks?

What I hope to do is make people happy. If you can bring good food [to] the table, with a minimal amount of time, a minimal amount of effort, with ingredients you can get at supermarket pretty easily, that should make your life happier.

The book includes “tricks” that help speed up the cooking process.

It’s just a way of doing things, a technique, that makes your life easier. Things that we certainly didn’t have a number of years ago. From plastic wrap to liners that nothing sticks to, to nonstick pans that are very easy to clean and so forth. It’s funny, because I’m looking at recipes that I did 30, 40 years ago – old books that I’ve done, you know – and it’s amazing how differently I cook. It’s a question of incorporating new ideas and new equipment into your way of cooking.

You’ve been cooking for a number of years – how have you seen home cooking change?

Oh gosh, again, it has to do with the ingredients. I came here in 1959, so that was over 50 years ago, and there was only one salad at the supermarket, and that was iceberg. You couldn’t find any mushrooms at the supermarket. I remember going to New York’s D’Agostino and asking for mushrooms and they say, “Aisle five,” and [in] aisle five are canned mushrooms. You had to go to a specialty store just to get regular mushrooms, and now you have, what, 15 different types? There was one type of salad dressing. There [were] no herbs, you know? So it’s another world. And on the other end, people tell me no one cooks any more. Maybe I am an optimist, but if people don’t cook, what do [markets] do with the stuff at the end of the week … someone is buying it somewhere. People are cooking. But cooking now and cooking then is another world. Cooking from scratch when I was a kid, often we had to pluck and eviscerate the chicken and then roast it in a pan where everything sticks, on a stove where you didn’t have a timer and you had to put wood and coal in the stove. It was a whole operation to roast a chicken. And now, you get boneless, skinless breast of chicken and prewashed spinach and presliced mushrooms. You get a nonstick skillet, you put it on your gas and within, what, eight, 10 minutes you have dinner from scratch.
You say that people should use markets as a tool.

In my book, I use the supermarket as a prep cook. In a restaurant, you have a prep cook, meaning you have someone who comes in the morning and he chops the mushrooms for you and so forth. And in a sense, that is what I try to do – use the supermarket as a professional chef would use a prep cook.

Do you go to the store with an idea of what you want to cook or do you just go and let yourself become inspired?

I usually have an idea of what I’m going to cook when I go to the market, and I think 50 percent of the time, I come out with something else. All of a sudden I see that there is duck for sale and I get two for one. I was coming to make roast pork or whatever and I end up with duck because there’s a bargain here or something else looked beautiful. The way the ingredients look at the market and the price and so forth determine what I’m going to do, unless I have a class to teach [and the recipe is predetermined].

And as a teacher, what would be a couple of things that you’d like to teach beginning cooks?

Stay with things that you like to eat and that your family likes to eat. And the equipment is very important – knives that are sharp and pots that you like to use. That comfort zone is very important. And then you have to have a glass of wine, you know? Then you relax.

An Evening With Jacques Pepin, sponsored by Left Bank Books: Wed., Oct. 15, admission for two with purchase of a book – lecture and Q&A at 7 p.m., booksigning to follow; COCA, 524 Trinity Ave., University City. Call 314.367.6732 for more information.

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