Brandon Eats

Wake Up and Smell the Garlic

My taste buds must be catatonic most of the time. You have to whack them with garlic and shock them with lemon to get them to wake up. Subtlety is frequently lost on me. In fact, I think the word "subtle" generally means bland. Don't you? Or is that just me?

Imagine how excited I became when I found Andrew Carmellini's new book, Urban Italian. The combination of garlic, lemon, and chopped red onion is hardly new, but I'd forgotten all about it until I started flipping through his book. And I was flipping through his book because I had a pound of shrimp, not much else, and no ideas. 

I did have the aforementioned shrimp, a can of beans, and some salad. Although technically an antipasti, this recipe is perfect for two, with a few of the shrimp dispersed among the children who are willing to eat them. Add a lovely, crisp Pinot Grigio (for authenticity) and you have a meal that can be whipped up in fifteen minutes or less. Because the only cooking involved is a moment of garlic sauteing and a quick sear of the shrimp, it's perfect for an unexpectedly unbearable hot May evening.

I made a few alterations--children demand to be accommodated, after all (and although you're supposed to ignore that kind of thing, after all these years I'm too, too exhausted to fight that endless fight. My line in the sand is that they must eat what we eat--with a few, um, accccommodations).

Andrew Carmellini's Rock Shrimp with Cannellini Bean, amended

Bean salad:

1 15-ounce can cannellini beans (I actually used Great Northern beans because that's what I had)

1/4 cup red onion, minced within an inch of its life

1 large garlic clove, minced

1/4 cup olive oil

1 tablespoon chopped parsley

1/4 teaspoon coarse salt

Freshly ground pepper

Splash of hot sauce

Drain and rinse the beans; mix all of the ingredients together and let sit while you make the shrimp.

Carmelli says you can add a little pesto (actually, I think it would be nice drizzled underneath or around the perimeter of the plate--unfortunately, I didn't have any).

Shrimp:

1 lb. shrimp (brined)

1/4 cup olive oil

1 large garlic clove, chopped

1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves

2 teaspoons fresh rosemary or more (I didn't want to kill my fledgling rosemary plants by completely denuding them)

juice of 1/2 lemon

1 tablespoon parsley or more, chopped

1/4 teaspoon coarse salt (if you didn't brine)

Freshly ground pepper

Sprinkle of red pepper flakes (Carmelli suggests 1/2 teaspoon and I would have used this if I hadn't had children hungrily staring at me. As it was, I put this little bit in when they weren't looking).

Blot the shrimp thoroughly and in a wide skillet, heat the 2 tablespoons of oil over high-ish heat. Add the shrimp and cook until pink and white. Turn down the heat immediately.

Pull your pan off the heat to avoid burning the garlic (which it's now time to add), add a little more oil, plus the red pepper flakes. Put the pan back on a medium-low flame and saute of for a minute or two and remove from the heat again. Add the last two tablespoons of oil, thyme, rosemary, lemon juice, parsley, salt, and pepper.

Spoon the beans on two plates and arrange the shrimp on top, remembering to toss a few on another plate so your children won't starve. Naturally, if your children eat beans, double the above bean recipe. Mine don't, so I made a little pasta with butter--the default--on the side. Drizzle it all with a little more olive, if you like.

Ahhhhhhh. So easy and so wonderful!

Gordon Ramsay Swears at You

I must be a closet masochist because I can endlessly listen to Gordon Ramsay swear at me (via http://www.twitter.com/kittenwithawhip).

Kendra Feather

It's not online yet (still) but here's the unedited version of the lovely Kendra Feather and her story from Belle:
   

    When Kendra Feather opened up her restaurant a decade ago, she knew a lot about waiting tables in restaurants, but not a lot about running one.  “If I’d known anything about it, I never would have lasted,” she says.

    She cobbled together the money to open Ipanema by saving the tips she made working at the 3rd Street Diner and relying on the generous help of friends who built her booths and renovated the space for very little remuneration other than her undying gratitude. The Friday she opened, she wrote checks to her suppliers from an empty checking account and prayed that over the weekend she would make enough money to cover it all on Monday.

    The gamble paid off. Over the years, she’s quietly and diligently worked to make the business self-sufficient and then profitable. “My ignorance kept me going,” she says. Other restaurants might have folded when an immediate pay-off failed to materialize, but Feather took the hard work for granted and persisted.

    Her decision to offer a vegetarian menu also filled a void vacated by Grace Place’s closing two years earlier. “I was forced to think out of the box . . . in 1998 there wasn’t much of a blue print for that kind of approach to vegetarian food. We were trying to take a side dish and make it an entrée.”

    And as one of the largest produce consumers for their size in the city, making it local and making it organic has proved to be a challenge as well. She hasn’t been able to find the right grower and has qualms about cleaning out all of the produce at a farmer’s market. Ingredients need to show up in time to be prepped for dinner service, and that hasn’t always happened when she’s tried to work with some small farmers. She’s becoming more optimistic, however. “I talked to Lisa (Taranto) of Tricycle gardens about an idea of local kids growing for us. I really like the idea (of an after-school program).”

    With Ipanema’s success and the experience she’s gained getting there, Feather was ready when her friend Manny Mendez of Kuba Kuba offered her the former Table 9 restaurant space on the corner of Park and Meadow. The restaurant immediately following (I can’t even remember the name of the place, Deveron. Do you?) Table 9 only stayed open for two weeks, and Mendez and his partner Johnny Giavos, owners of the building, were looking for a new tenant. Feather jumped at the opportunity to do something different.

    The new restaurant, named Garnett’s and opening this summer, won’t be vegetarian, although there will be vegetarian options. Feather envisions more of an old-style, neighborhood sandwich shop with things like Cobb salad and a Croque Monsieur on the menu. Named after her grandmother, Garnett’s will have plenty of sandwiches inspired by other family members as well. “Food is a way to connect with people. It’s a way to care for them . . . I come from the school of thought says, ‘a piece of pie can make everything better.’” If the past ten years are any indication, Kendra Feather knows exactly what she’s talking about.

Burger-rama

Oh, the sacrifices I make. After eating a whole lot of burgers around town, I wrote about the few that made my cut in the current issue of Style Weekly. Here's a guide to finding the best burger in town.

And if you pick up a copy of Belle magazine, you can also read a profile of the lovely Kendra Feather of Ipanema Cafe . Unfortunately, it isn't online yet. I'll add the link when it is.

Broad Appetit

One of my very favorite Richmond events of all is this Sunday, June 7th, from 12:00 pm to 5:00 pm. Join me for Broad Appétit! I'll be the one impatiently tapping my foot in line while trying to juggle three plates of food and eat from each all at once.