Author: Henry

When Nicholas Stefanelli was growing up in the small town of Beallsville, Md., “my friends always wanted to come over and eat at our house,” recalls the chef. Food was “a focal point” in his upbringing; both sets of grandparents—Greek and Italian—tended backyard gardens, and “everybody” in the family cooked. Stefanelli, 38, initially pursued studies in fashion design, but after one transformative trip to Italy, he was drawn to the kitchen, his family’s passion for food laying the foundation for a bright culinary career.

After graduating from Maryland’s L’Academie de Cuisine in 2000, Stefanelli accrued experience at restaurants such as Wine Spectator Grand Award winner the French Laundry, and under chef Fabio Trabocchi, who now owns Best of Award of Excellence winners Del Mar, Fiola and Fiola Mare. In 2015, Stefanelli opened his own restaurant, an Italian tasting-menu concept called Masseria in Washington, D.C. The restaurant quickly gained acclaim for its refined spin on familiar Italian flavors in pastas like chicken liver agnolotti and entrées like Mediterranean stone bass with a spicy saffron emulsion. Masseria also established itself as a wine destination, offering an impressive global list managed by wine director John Filkins. The program first earned the Best of Award of Excellence in 2017 and offers nearly 1,000 selections today.

Now, Stefanelli is building a small empire of his own. He is slated to open a Greek restaurant in D.C. next year, but first, he is putting the finishing touches on Officina, a 14,000-square-foot, three-story project in the city’s massive new waterfront complex, the Wharf, opening in stages with a completion goal of late September. The space will feature a market—including an in-house butcher, baker and wine shop—plus a trattoria for full-service dining and an “amaro library” bar, and a rooftop terrace with cocktails, snacks and plenty of Champagne options.

Stefanelli spoke with editorial assistant Julie Harans about broadening his horizons beyond Carlo Rossi, playing with Chinese and Italian influences in the same dish, and what pairing has most surprised him recently.

WS: How did you wind up in the restaurant industry?
NS: I went to Europe to go look at fashion design schools, and while I was in Italy I was floored by food culture … Then, D.C. was a very different place than it is now. And so when I saw the people in the streets eating and drinking and enjoying, I was just floored by why we don’t have that where we are, and I came back and went to culinary school and started cooking. It’s just kind of like a switch got flipped.

WS: Can you talk about some of the philosophies and inspirations behind your cooking?
NS: A lot of it is the regionality of the food, and trying to be a little more playful and avant-garde with how we put things together but still keeping the heart and soul of what that dish is. Like the linguine with XO sauce that we do: I went to China and helped at a friend’s restaurant and learned how to make XO sauce while we were there, and I fell in love with it. But I took what XO sauce was and I made it kind of Italian. In Italy, there’s also a lot of dried fish and anchovies.

So instead of dried shrimp, it’s dried scallops, which are kind of the core pieces, and instead of Chinese sausage we use prosciutto, and then we cook it all down in olive oil with garlic and a little bit of ginger in it. … It’s so simple and beautiful, yet it’s really complex to get to that point as well. So when you eat that dish, you have something of nostalgia but you also have something of future going into it.

WS: How were you introduced to the world of wine?
NS: When I first started cooking, I worked at this restaurant, Galileo. And when I was an intern, the grill cook was back there, and one of the wine runners was like, “If you give me a veal chop, I’ll give you a bottle of Barolo.” And I’m like, “What’s a bottle of Barolo?” My grandfather drank Carlo Rossi out of a gallon jug … In the Windows on the World wine book, [Kevin Zraly] has this sentiment talking about, “You have to drink a lot of bad wine to know what good wine tastes like,” and it’s very true. I’ve drunk a lot of bad wine. And then you really taste something and you’re like, wow, that’s special.

WS: What role does wine play in your restaurants?
NS: Understanding the wines, you can help guide the [dining] experience to make it even better. And we do that education with our kitchen staff, so they go through a wine class every week with our somms to understand the art of food and wine and the pairing. It also helps them as they’re cooking a dish to know, “OK, well if I put too much acid in the sauce, or if this isn’t balanced right, or this is burnt,” how that affects what is sitting in a glass and what people are eating, so it comes together as a full experience.

WS: Have you discovered any pairings during your time in the restaurant that surprised you?
NS: Our “foie-noli” that we do, it’s a cannoli shell with a foie gras mousse and pistachios, and with a 15-year-old aged Marco De Bartoli Marsala, it’s this beautiful bite and sip. There’s not a ton of great aged Marsala out there like what you think of [with] Madeira and Sherry. So that was a fun eye-opening experience.

WS: How have you seen D.C.’s food scene change?
NS: Within the past five years, neighborhoods have developed, people are doing great things in different pockets that never happened before. So you have a great Vietnamese restaurant or a Filipino restaurant or Eastern European, all these places that are not your steak house or French bistro … The city has definitely expanded its reach and diversity.

WS: Tell us about your upcoming project, Officina.
NS: It’s big, it’s fun, it’s got multiple components. This is three different levels and three different places to go; it’s a place that you could come and have coffee in the morning and a croissant or brioche with granita, you could come back and have lunch in the trattoria, you could have drinks [on] the rooftop at night after a concert. So there’s something for everybody all day long that’s happening in the space, but they’re all different experiences that tie into one core nucleus.

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A Toronto chef was horrified when he left his knife roll in an Uber taxi and even more distressed to find out it had been thrown away.

This Coleslaw Recipe is one I’ve been making pretty much forever!  This homemade coleslaw is quick and easy and my whole family loves it. Goes with great as a side, or sandwich topper!

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The post The Best Coleslaw Recipe appeared first on Spend With Pennies.

At New York fine-dining spot Per Se, chef Thomas Keller’s showstopping classic dishes tend to get all the attention. But the tasting menus here aren’t all caviar and pearls; simple, traditional French techniques undergird much of the magic. An example is mushrooms served à la grecque, a light pickling preparation that harks back to the hors d’oeuvres carts of formal midcentury dining rooms. Today at Per Se, the preparation appears often, either tucked in as a side dish with items like grilled fish, or as a course in and of itself, with grilled bread alongside.

To make your own Per Se–inspired mushroom toast, boil a mixture of vinegar, white wine and spices, then pour it over sautéed mushrooms. Next, set aside the marinating mushrooms and wait, preferably for 24 hours—which is perhaps the most difficult part of the whole exercise. But it’s worth it. “To nail it, you want to do this ahead of time so you really infuse the vinaigrette into the mushrooms,” says Corey Chow, executive chef of Per Se, which holds a Wine Spectator Grand Award for its wine list. You can pass some of the time making his recipe for scallion oil, which is great drizzled on the finished toast—or on just about anything.

To maintain the precise herbaceous notes in the marinade—seasoned with parsley stems, fennel seeds, coriander seeds, star anise and peppercorns—Chow recommends turning off the heat as soon as the mixture has reached a boil so the liquid is gently infused with the fresh, light aromatics, rather than continuing to cook, which “dumbs down the flavor,” he explains. It’s not unlike extraction in winemaking. “Once [the marinade] comes up to 212 degrees, that activates all the aromatics to release their oils and flavor, and then it rests. If you boil it, it’s just going, going, going and you’re extracting, extracting—you’re taking almost too much flavor.”

Chow’s kitchen is fastidiously low-waste, and the bare parsley stems in the marinade are a way to utilize a part of the herb that typically gets tossed. But if you haven’t already saved headless stems in your fridge, you can use the leaves on your parsley as a finishing garnish on the toast.

At Per Se, “We can do this dish with beautiful, expensive bluefoot mushrooms from France, matsutake mushrooms from Oregon, chanterelles, morels,” Chow says. “But for the home cook, you can just get whatever’s around in the market; you can use button mushrooms, you can use hen of the woods, which are a little bit cheaper, trumpet royales that are more common.”

Buy what looks good, knowing that larger specimens may need to be chopped into bite-size chunks for toast, while smaller mushrooms can be left whole. “It depends on what you find at the market,” Chow says. “That’s what’s fun about nature: It changes every single time.”

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Pairing Tip: Why Aged White Rioja Works with This Dish

[videoPlayerTag videoId=”5831609190001″]

Visit our YouTube channel to watch a version of this Perfect Match video with closed captions.

For more tips on how to approach pairing this dish with wine, recommended bottlings and notes on chef Corey Chow’s inspiration, read the companion article, “A Perfect Match: Mushroom Toast With an Aged White,” in the Oct. 31, 2018, issue, via our online archives or by ordering a digital edition (Zinio or Google Play) or a back issue of the print magazine. For even more wine pairing options, WineSpectator.com members can find other recently rated white Riojas in our Wine Ratings Search.

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Forest Mushroom Toast with Scallion Oil

For the marinade:

• 2 1/2 cups Champagne vinegar
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 scant cup white wine
• 1/3 cup parsley stems
• 1 tablespoon sliced garlic
• 3 bay leaves
• 1 1/2 tablespoons fennel seeds
• 2 1/2 tablespoons Telicherry or black peppercorns
• 1/4 cup coriander seeds
• 3 star anise pods
• 4 tablespoons mustard seed or grainy mustard

For the mushrooms:

• Canola oil, for coating pan
• 1 1/2 pounds mixed mushrooms, such as hen of the woods, chanterelle and trumpet royale, in small clusters and pieces
• Salt, to taste

For the scallion oil:

• 1 rounded cup thinly sliced scallions
• 3/4 cup baby spinach
• 1 1/2 cups canola oil
• 1 rounded teaspoon salt

For the radishes:

Olive oil, for coating pan

9 red radishes, stems removed, quartered

Salt, to taste

Lemon juice, to taste

For serving:

• Six 1/2-inch-thick slices country bread, halved
• Olive oil, for brushing bread
• Salt, for sprinkling on bread
• Parsley leaves, if desired

1. In a large pot, combine vinegar, sugar, wine and 1 1/4 cups water. Bring to a boil, then add parsley stems, garlic, bay leaves, fennel seeds, peppercorns, coriander seeds, star anise and mustard. Turn off the heat and let cool slightly.

2. Heat a saucepan over medium and coat with canola oil. Add the mushrooms and lightly sauté until fragrant and lightly browned. Season with salt to taste. Transfer to paper towels to drain oil. Pour marinade into a large bowl through a strainer. Discard solids or reserve for another pickling project. Submerge mushrooms in marinade and let sit for at least 1 hour, preferably marinating them overnight, transferring to the refrigerator when the liquid has cooled to room temperature. Drain mushrooms and transfer to a serving bowl. Discard marinade or reserve for pickling other items.

3. In a blender or food processor, combine scallions, spinach, 1 1/2 cups canola oil and 1 rounded teaspoon salt. Blend on high for 5 minutes until bright green and slightly grainy. If oil becomes hot, quickly transfer to a mixing bowl set over a bowl filled with ice to cool it down.

4. Heat a saucepan over medium and coat with olive oil. Add radishes and quickly sauté until slightly softened. Sprinkle with salt and lemon juice to taste. The lemon juice will brighten the radishes and provide some acid.

5. Preheat a broiler. Brush bread with olive oil and sprinkle with salt. Broil bread until toasted, flipping with tongs, about 1 minute per side.

6. Add radishes to the bowl of mushrooms, stirring to combine. Drizzle mixture with scallion oil and garnish with parsley leaves, if desired. Arrange toast on the side. Serves 6 as an appetizer.

Long before Danica Patrick rose to fame as an asphalt-ceiling-smashing race-car driver with a Napa wine label to her name, she was a kid growing up in Illinois. She never loved the bone-chilling weather there, but she toughed it out on a Midwesterner’s logic: Life was cold, and the warm and scenic climes that she preferred were just where you went on vacation.

In 2007, she would reject that logic, buying a home in Scottsdale, Ariz. Now, just months into her retirement from a multiple-record-setting career on both the IndyCar and NASCAR circuits—including a win at the Indy Japan 300 in 2008 that made her the first woman ever to win a major-league, open-wheel race in a North American series—she is spending more time at home, making dinner for friends or waffles for her boyfriend, Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers.

But this is not your mama’s retirement. After her final race at the Indianapolis 500 in May 2018, Patrick flew straight to Auction Napa Valley, where a lot including bottles of her wine, Somnium, and a car ride with her sold for $300,000. With the racetrack receding in her rearview, Patrick has shifted her winemaking career into high gear.

Patrick fell into wine in 2006 when, on a trip to Napa, she tasted Quintessa‘s Illumination Sauvignon Blanc. It was love at first sip, and she struck up a friendship with winemaker Aaron Pott. In 2009, she purchased 24 acres on Howell Mountain for Somnium and brought Pott on board as winemaker. They released the inaugural 2014 estate Cabernet in 2017, and the portfolio has since grown to include a saignée-method rosé and a Sauvignon Blanc sourced from Bavarian Lion Vineyard in Knights Valley—a nod to the revelatory glass of Illumination that started it all. She wants to help others have their own wine moments, she says: “You can go to Napa to [do] all that on a high level, or you can do it at home.”

Patrick’s own 400-plus-bottle cellar factors prominently into her entertaining habits. “Usually I go down to the cellar and I grab four or five bottles of red wine,” she says. “That’s the first trip, and if it’s a good night, there’s one or two more trips down there for the group of 12 or so of us that usually get together.” She favors Napa Cabernet, and her collection includes appearances from Harlan, Bond, Abreu, Pott and Quintessa.

Due to the 8,300-square-foot modern house’s unusual, double-disc-shaped exterior, Patrick nicknamed it the Jetsons House when she bought it. “Modern can be very angular,” she says. “This is everything but angular. It looks like flying saucers—everything is very round.”

The kitchen is no exception. With curves of taupe Venetian plaster, a swooping arc of blue- and purple-veined black granite, black leather barstools and brushed-steel appliances, the space evokes the wheels, asphalt and chrome of a racetrack, though Patrick says that wasn’t part of her thinking when she bought the place. At the time, she was more concerned with actual wheels: She needed a home for her cars, in addition to her wine, and the seven-car garage and 1,000-bottle-capacity cellar were just right.

But today, the kitchen gets serious traffic—Danica-style. The title of her 2017 fitness book, Pretty Intense, reportedly describes not only her health regimen, but Patrick herself. She does things her way, and she throws herself into cooking with characteristic focus and swagger. “I eat paleo, which means everyone that comes over eats paleo too, because I don’t cook two meals, I cook one,” she says. “Turns out most of the time, people love it.”

Some cooks follow recipes assiduously; others fly by the seat of their pants. You can guess which one Patrick is: “Yeah, I’m the fly-by-the-seat-of-the-pants one,” she laughs. “I don’t really care for baking, but I love to cook, and I’m good on the grill, I’m good searing, good roasting things, you name it.” It’s likely no coincidence that her cooking, with its charred, roasty bent, tends to marry particularly well with a good bottle of Cab.

From her grillside vantage on the patio, Patrick has a stunning view of one of Arizona’s most iconic sights: Camelback Mountain. It’s a fitting backdrop for a woman who just keeps climbing.

Photo Gallery

Photos by Ben & Kelly Photography

Lattice Pie Crust is simple to make and turns any pie into a masterpiece!

Pie is an easy classic dessert for good reason.  It’s simple to make and uses ingredients most of us already have in the kitchen.  A perfect pie filled with fruit is a dessert perfect for any occasion and it’s incredibly simple to make a beautiful lattice crust!

How To Make A Lattice Pie Crust

This is the only guide on how to make a lattice pie crust you will need. When you think of the perfect pie, you probably picture a fancy lattice crust. It is seriously easy to pull off, and takes your baking to a whole other level!

A lattice crust is created by weaving long strips of pie crust over top of the pie to create a weaved “mesh”. No only does it look gorgeous, it allows the steam to escape and allows all of the beautiful fruits inside to peek through.

It is super important to remember that pie crust is delicate, like any pastry dough. Aim to minimize the time you spend touching the pie crust. If the butter or shortening in the crust melts while you are preparing it, your crust will not be as light and flaky as you might have hoped!

Prepare your pie crust according to your recipe directions (this works with store bought crust too) and line a 9″ pie plate with a bottom crust and fill with your favorite fillings.  Make sure the filling is completely cool before beginning.

For the Lattice Crust

• Roll the dough out to 1/4″ thickness and approximately a 12″ circle on a lightly floured surface.
• Cut the pie crust into long strips about 1/2″ to 3/4″ wide. You can use a knife, a pizza cutter, pasta wheel or a pretty lattice cutter to cut them.
• To begin the lattice pie crust, use every other strip of crust and lay them evenly in one direction across your pie (image #1 above). Use the longer pieces in the centre, and the shorter ones towards the end.
• To begin the lattice pattern, gently fold back every second piece halfway and add one strip of pie crust across the center (image #2 above)
• Repeat this step alternating the pieces you fold back and adding more strips of dough.
• Once the whole pie is covered, trim any extra long pieces and crimp and seal the edges.
• Roll out any extra little dough pieces and cut out shapes to add pretty decoration to the pie, adhere with egg wash.

If you notice the dough becoming sticky, not to worry! Just dust your hands with flour before continuing. Once the lattice pie crust is on the pie, whisk an egg with a splash of water to create an egg wash, and spread it over the lattice pie crust. This helps the crust get a beautiful glossy golden brown color!

Pie Recipes You’ll Love

• Apple Pie Recipe
• Strawberry Rhubarb Pie
• Blueberry Pie
• The Best Apple Crumb Pie
• Praline Pumpkin Pie

There you have it, a pie crust that will impress your friends and family, and doesn’t take too much extra work!

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