Kale Pesto
Makes about 1 cup
John Besh’s Pickled Vegetables
1 quart
Cooking with Chocolate’s Basic Cake Batter
6 to 8 servings
Bourbon-Pecan Macarons
about 22 macarons
My Last Meal: Grace Dinsmoor
I would go to Barcelona on the Mediterranean and eat at Can Majó. [It has] great seafood. I love the razor clams. They are so briny – fresh right from the coast. And they have their own goat farm. They make goat cheese and use it on a salad with bitter greens, toasted pine nuts…
My Last Meal: Nick Miller
I go back to what is comforting to me. That would be barbecued grilled pork steaks with butter-braised red potatoes and a cucumber-tomato salad. That’s it. I always liked something fresh and clean, and something fatty. … I just want something to satisfy me and make me happy and remember all the times my dad…
My Last Meal: Skip Steele
Am I being convicted or something? Gee, that is easy: pot roast, carrots and taters; some onion in there, too. Some nice brown gravy and corn bread. Skip Steele, chef-owner, Bogart’s Now, it’s your turn. Find us on Facebook or Twitter and let us know what you would have for your last meal using the…
My Last Meal: Mike Emerson
Very simple but speaks of family tradition and so freaking good: pho from Mai Lee. Mike Emerson, chef-owner, Pappy’s Smokehouse Now, it’s your turn. Find us on Facebook or Twitter and let us know what you would have for your last meal using the hashtag #MyLastMeal. At the end of the month, the reader with…
My Last Meal: Kim Tucci
I think about it all the time. Three things I’d like to have: A double cheeseburger with everything on it from Carl’s Drive-In, fried chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy, and The Pasta House Company’s Rigatoni Roma – which is rigatoni, fresh mushrooms, peas, prosciutto, a meat sauce and a dollop of béchamel. And I…
My Last Meal: Clara Moore
A fried chicken picnic. The picnic part is important to the aesthetic of the whole thing. Fried chicken, creamy potato salad, creamy coleslaw, and something pickled – picked vegetables. That’s it. And beer. All this springtime is reminding me of when I went to Paris in April so, in Paris in April, if I can.…
My Last Meal: Marcel Keraval
Start with some caviar, foie gras … a little lobster, and who knows after that? A nice cheese with fruit and a beautiful chocolate soufflé, sabayon, something like that. And some good wine, a good vintage Bordeaux. Oh, some Champagne probably with the caviar. After that I would so say, “Bye-bye, all of you. Au…
My Last Meal: Azhar Mohammad
Foie gras on brioche toast with orange marmalade. Bone marrow, too. Azhar Mohammad, executive chef, The Ritz-Carlton, St. Louis Now, it’s your turn. Find us on Facebook or Twitter and let us know what you would have for your last meal using the hashtag #MyLastMeal. At the end of the month, the reader with our…
My Last Meal: Lou Rook
A big steak with some great mashed potatoes and just incredible fresh farmer vegetables: grilled onions, peppers and homegrown tomatoes. And probably a little peach cobbler to finish with some homemade ice cream and a nice, big bottle of red wine of some sort. That would be the beginning, at least. Lou Rook, executive chef,…
My Last Meal: Jason Tilford
I am too simple of a guy. I just want a big, Prime, bone-in strip steak with a Caesar salad – a perfect Caesar salad with Parmigiano-Reggiano and a lot garlic and anchovy, not a wimpy one. And an Italian Barolo, a big red. That would do it. Jason Tilford, executive chef, Milagro Modern Mexican…
My Last Meal: Amy Zupanci
It would be fresh bread – well made, naturally leavened – with roasted wild mushrooms, a sunny-side-up egg, and fresh shaved black truffles and asparagus. That’s what I would like. And maybe some Parmesan cheese. That’s, to me, one of my favorite meals of all time. I don’t know that that’s an entire meal, but…
Strawberry Grilled Cheese
1 serving
Blueberry Cocktail
1 serving
Brown Butter Madeleines
12 madeleines
More from our conversation with Jon Parker
In this month’s Five Questions interview, Byron Kerman spoke with Jon Parker about the reopening of his Parker’s Table wine and gourmet foods shop in Richmond Heights. In the first part of the interview, available on page 54 of our May issue, Parker told us about what happened with his old location, his ever-growing record…
What would you have for your last meal? We want to know
In this month’s feature story My Last Meal, we revealed six local chefs’ answers to the age-old question: What would you want for your last meal? But did you know we actually asked 18 area culinarians the ultimate kitchen query? Talk about research. Unfortunately, we couldn’t fit all 18 answers into the magazine, but hey,…
Homemade Puff Pastry
In this month’s Vegetize It column, we touted how easy it is to make puff pastry at home. Now, we’re ready to put our money where our mouth is — so to speak, at least. Click here for the recipe for homemade puff pastry. Then, get cookin’ with those black bean empanadas.
What to do with White Whiskey
In Backwoods Booze Returns (page 15), we told you all about the latest trend in craft distilling: white whiskey. We even recommended five bottles to look for next time you head to the liquor store. What’s that? Drinking it straight isn’t your style? No worries. Here, two ways to put that white dog whiskey to…
Review: The Crow’s Nest in Maplewood
The Crow’s Nest7336 Manchester Road, Maplewood, 314.781.0989 Idiosyncratic, scatterbrained and quirky are all decent adjectives for The Crow’s Nest, the gritty little restaurant that hopes to succeed in the prime spot on the Maplewood strip abandoned by the less imaginative Grateful Inn and Red Lion. Since opening in October, this hipster nirvana has spawned a…
Recipe: Handlebar’s Frank Blinchiki
We’re suckers for a hot dog. But a hot dog wrapped in a pancake? Well now you’re just killing us. The Frank Blinchiki on Handlebar’s new Russian-inspired menu contains all the big flavors of a Chicago-style dog wrapped securely inside a teensy little package. A Russian pancake in lieu of a bun conveniently holds together…
Review: Cleveland-Heath in Edwardsville
Cleveland-Heath106 N. Main St., Edwardsville, 618.307.4830, clevelandandheath.com Magic Carpet Ride was filtering through the speakers as I tucked into a dish of Brussels sprouts at Cleveland-Heath, the eponymously named restaurant by the girlfriend-boyfriend team of Jennifer Cleveland and Eric Heath in downtown Edwardsville. The obvious reaction as a food writer would be to overplay the…
Mark Bittman’s Curried Chickpea Salad
6 to 8 servings
Black Bean and Veggie “Sushi”
1 to 2 servings
Black Bean, Spinach and Feta Empanadas
Makes 18 empanadas
Frank Blinchiki
10 servings
Strawberry-Jalapeño Jam
1 pint
Sweet Peach and Safflower Iced Tea
1 serving
Black Bean Empanadas
Looking for a Mexican restaurant? Ask vegetarians. Their GPS will find one like chips find salsa. Mexican restaurants, no matter how plain or fancy, promise a variety of meat-free options well beyond the ubiquitous iceberg wedge. Plus, margaritas are vegan. As a home cook, I heart Mexican cuisine because the ingredients are inexpensive and easy…
Going Green: The appeal of unripe fruit
Unripe fruit doesn’t drip with sweet juices like its lush, more mature counterpart. It hardly proffers a floral bouquet to make your taste buds water. Its colorless flesh tastes bland, bitter, even sour, and feels hard as a rock instead of soft and supple. Ah, but don’t be so quick to dismiss it. The unique…
Backwoods Booze Returns
Click here for a slideshow on five white whiskeys to try. Distilling was legal and untaxed in this land until the Whiskey Act of 1791 came along, enraging farmers who sold their grain in the form of whiskey. Whiskey rebels took to the backwoods, giving rise to the black market of moonshine: bootlegged hooch so…
Red Berry Redux
Melted into jams. Chopped into sundaes. Sliced into salads. Marinated in sweet liqueur. These days, strawberries’ resume goes far beyond the pie plate. 1. Salad In a large salad bowl, combine 2 cups thinly sliced strawberries, half of a thinly sliced cantaloupe, 2 thinly sliced avocados, 4 cups baby arugula and 6 ounces feta cheese.…
Short List: Beignets
Behold the beignet, the doughnut’s Southern cousin. These holeless fritters, made world-famous by Cafe Du Monde in New Orleans, have pride of place a bit further up the Mississippi River, too, on menus at a passel of area eateries. At breakfast, dessert or – let’s face it – any old time, these locally perfected beignets…
No-Stress Homemade Puff Pastry
approximately 4 pastry sheets
