Root for Gratins: Welcome fall vegetables with creamy, crusty casseroles
Autumn’s chilly nights and cooler days herald a return to real cooking. No longer do our dinners consist only of vast chopped salads and platters of succulent summer fruits. I welcome the oven’s warmth filling the kitchen and linger to prepare roasts, braises and sustaining stews of all sorts. But while we may yearn for…
Holding out for a Gyro
The gyro is like a tasting menu in every bite. You have creamy, cool and tangy tzatziki sauce, succulent and spicy lamb, crunchy onions that add a little heat, sweet-tart tomato chunks, and it all comes wrapped in a warm, chewy pita. If the chef throws on some feta to finish it with a sharp…
Fall Forecast: What’s in for dining out
Dining out this fall will be a tasty blast – just take a peek at what’s new and what’s next. Wild adventure All around town, chefs’ imaginations are taking flight with game birds. “I’m excited about having some little birds come in,” said Adam Gnau of Acero. Both Gnau and his Maplewood neighbor Josh Galliano…
Sweet Potato Ice Cream
1 quart
Rich & Famous: Classic terrines are so right now
According to Julia Child, “If you can make a meatloaf, you can make a pâté.” But can you make a terrine? Certainly, for a terrine and a pâté are nearly one and the same. Terrines are typically prepared and served in a ceramic baking dish called a terrine, while the same is not necessarily true…
Review: Mazara in Clayton
In Italy, the fishing village Mazara sits at the mouth of the Mazaro river in southwestern Sicily. In Clayton, the restaurant Mazara (ma-ZAR-a) sits on Forsyth Boulevard in a space formerly occupied by several other restaurants. What connects the two is simple, rustic cooking and an emphasis on family. Owners Joe and Mindy Sciales came…
Sweet Potato Recipes to Try This Month
Enough already. Stop with the marshmallows. Hold the brown sugar. Spare the cinnamon. If, like most Americans, your experience of the sweet potato begins and ends at the Thanksgiving dinner table, get ready for a culinary adventure. October is prime time for locally grown sweets. Plus, the best selection of unusual sweet potatoes peaks at…
Recipe: The Crossing’s Beet Salad
In the 10 years since The Crossing opened its doors, plenty of dishes have come and gone from the menu, but the beet salad – an elegant, simple stunner – always remains. Chef and owner Jim Fiala’s take on this cool-weather classic pits sweet roasted beets against tangy goat cheese, adds pine nuts for crunch…
Review: Bella Vita in Rock Hill
Bella Vita, a new spot that debuted in Rock Hill this summer, is certainly a wine bar: Quality bottles and exclusive vintages with delightfully smooth finishes? Check. Smart, slightly pretentious atmosphere? Check. Cheese plates? Why not. But with its innovative spin on serving wine (and a welcome one at that), this is not your typical…
Chocolate Soufflé
8 servings
Carrot Gratin
6 to 8
Sweet Potato Crust for Fish
• Mix all with a electric mixer on low. 1¼ lbs. roasted sweet potato flesh (no peel) ½ cup mayonnaise ¼ tsp. salt ¼ tsp. black pepper, coarsely ground 2 Tbsp. bread crumbs 3/8 Tbsp. Creole seasoning (like Paul Prudhomme) Clarified butter ½ lb. catfish filet
The Crossing’s Fresh Beet Salad
4 servings
Country-Style Terrine
1 terrine loaf
Kitchen remodel
Even without highway closures and economy worries, the restaurant business is a tough one, and established restaurateurs must constantly search for new ways to continue attracting diners. Case in point: Pablo Weiss, who has recently made some changes at his years-old downtown eatery, Kitchen K. In 2003, Weiss revitalized the old space at the corner…
Live-Culture Cuisine: Creamy kefir cooks and chills
Got your probiotics? U.S. food and beverage manufacturers are pushing all sorts of yogurt and other products that promise to restore our digestive woes. (How many bloated women have been cured by a cup of Dannon Activia, I’d like to know?) Yet people of the Balkans discovered the wonders of fermented milk centuries ago. Kefir,…
So you want to start a winery?
I have been asked for my entire wine life if I ever wanted to open a winery. I did have the occasional daydream of grape growing and winemaking during my college years. After college, I even grew grapes in my backyard – and crushed them in my basement – for several years. Thankfully, that amateur…
As light as air
Want to impress? Bake a soufflé. Soufflés have an almost magical appeal, complete with their own mythology: You must tiptoe and whisper in the kitchen while the soufflés are baking. Don’t slam the door! In the restaurants that offer them, the dessert soufflés must be ordered before dinner and cost extra. Pffft! That is not…
Save room for dessert
Mike Johnson opens restaurants like he’s playing Monopoly, and in Maplewood, he’s got the deed to Manchester Road. With three houses already on the board – Boogaloo, El Scorcho and Fu Manchu – all that’s left is to build a hotel. But M.J.’s Maplewood row isn’t the place we’d take the boys, at least not…
Two decades in, it’s still about the food
Lovers of Japanese food are already familiar with Nippon Tei, a sushi and Asian-fusion restaurant that has been open in Ballwin since 2001. Owner Ann Bognar recently punched through a wall of the restaurant and expanded the space to accommodate a new sake bar, which will have its grand opening on Oct. 18. After two…
